
Class 

Book ,VA35 , a 

Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



MODERN THOUGHT 

AND 

TRADITIONAL FAITH 



BY 
GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 




NEW YORK : EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






Copyright, 191 1, by 
EATON & MAINS 



CCI.A280S31 



TO ALL FELLOW-SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH, MEN 
WHO BELIEVE THAT TRUTH ALONE CON- 
TAINS HIGHEST VALUES, AND WHO EAR- 
NESTLY SEEK TO KNOW THE TRUTH THAT 
THEREBY THEY MAY THE BETTER KNOW 
GOD, THIS VOLUME IS LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

Introduction xvii 

CHAPTER I 
The Middle Ages i 



CHAPTER II 
The Renaissance 17 

CHAPTER III 
Scientific Exploration 29 

CHAPTER IV 
Philosophy and Critical Science 43 

CHAPTER V 
Some Considerations by the Way 59 

CHAPTER VI 
Personal to the Reader 79 

CHAPTER VII 
Hebrew History 89 

CHAPTER VIII 
Old Testament Origins 107 

CHAPTER IX 
New Testament Criticism 127 

CHAPTER X 
Growth of Interpretation 147 

CHAPTER XI 
The Kingdom and Humanity 171 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XII 
Christ and the Modern Age 201 

CHAPTER XIII 
Christ and the Modern Age (Continued) 2 ij 

CHAPTER XIV 
Miracles and Other Wonders 241 

Bibliography 267 

Index 273 



PREFACE 

There has never been a time in the history of scholar- 
ship when Truth for Truth's sake was so earnestly 
pursued as now. There has never been an age when 
the scholar was so fully and critically equipped for the 
ascertainment of Truth as in the present. It is in these 
convictions that this book is written. 

The ground reviewed in this volume is mostly his- 
torical, and the greater part of the facts as set forth 
have long been accepted without challenge. At the 
risk of appearing quite elemental, I have, in the earlier 
chapters, traversed a history which to scholars has 
long been familiar. These chapters, while not exhaustive 
as discussions, do, I believe, so indicate the character 
of the mediaeval ages, the faith, the science, the political 
conditions of those ages, as to make sufficiently clear 
the character of the background from which the modern 
thought -world has emerged. 

Owing to mental habits which are controlling in 
many minds, and which have been domesticated in tra- 
ditional thinking, I may not, perhaps, hope, especially 
in the brief section of the book devoted to the history 
of biblical criticism, to meet in all cases with sym- 
pathetic readers. I can only say, however, that through- 
out the preparation of this volume I have been infinitely 
far removed from a desire to disturb the faith of any 
for the sake simply of so doing. 

There are some things, however, which seem to me 
reasonably certain. If it be true that any minds are 



viii PREFACE 

resting in a traditional view, however cherished such 
view, which does not in itself represent the real truth, 
the truth for which an enlightened scholarship must 
stand, then it is far better that such persons should be 
disturbed rather than that they should remain content 
in error. Nothing in the last resort is of value, nothing 
will finally stand, save the truth. A traditional error 
in religious faith, however ancient its history or respect- 
able its associations, might to-day prove an unmeasured 
peril to the Christian Church. The educated generation, 
now so surely coming to the front, is by the very proc- 
esses of its training largely critical. It may be accepted 
with absolute certainty that the controlling mind of 
this generation will not rest in any faith which cannot 
stand the test of most critical examination. The ques- 
tion of criticism fundamentally is one of immeasurably 
greater importance than that of disturbing or failing 
to disturb the favored notions of an unscholarly belief. 
It is a question of so addressing Christian truth to the 
high-school and university-bred young life of the present 
world as to command both their intelligence and their 
conscience. No generation of mind has been trained 
in an intellectual atmosphere so fraught with the spirit 
of scientific research, of philosophical criticism, with a 
passion for accuracy of knowledge, as that which sur- 
rounds the younger life of to-day. 

Disturbance of old, and often cherished, views has 
always been an incident of intellectual progress. It is 
a part of the price and of the risk which the world has 
to pay for all its real advances. But such disturbance 
would better occur a thousand times over than the 
persistent attempt to bind the Church to views which 



PREFACE ix 

the educated mind of the age has not only outgrown, 
but which it utterly rejects. Where one mind would 
make shipwreck of faith because of disturbance of 
inherited views, a score of more valuable minds would 
pass beyond all control of a Church which would refuse 
hospitality to what a learned age must accept as the 
critical and approved findings of truth. 

But it is time that another side of this whole question 
of criticism should be clearly stated and emphasized. 
There is really no reason, not one, why the faith of 
the humblest Christian should be in the slightest sense 
disturbed, no reason why the ardor and devotion of 
the most simple worshiper should be in any measure 
cooled or lessened, by the legitimate findings of biblical 
criticism. As in all fields of research, some minds have 
doubtless entered viciously into the sphere of this crit- 
icism. But as a matter of fact the fruits of biblical 
criticism as handed over to the Church have been win- 
nowed and gathered by devout, consecrated, and most 
capable Christian minds. The holy mission of this 
criticism has been not to destroy, but to upbuild. The 
summed-up purpose and results of both the textual 
and literary criticism of the sacred Scriptures have been 
to give to the world the Bible, the Bible alone, in its 
purest form. The Bible, in its passage to us from the 
early Middle Ages, has had foisted upon it many tra- 
ditional errors and false interpretations. It has been 
the mission of criticism to free the Bible from these 
obscuring errors. And so it has resulted that at no 
time during its history has the Bible as a book been so 
unincumbered with human traditions, with false inter- 
pretations; at no time has it been so pure in its text, 



x PREFACE 

so well known in its literary history and in the chron- 
ological order of its books, as at the present. Never 
before have its spiritual teachings shone so beautifully, 
and never has the historic Christ stood forth from its 
pages so impressively, as to-day. The Bible was never 
so well understood, and never has it had so free oppor- 
tunity to speak forth its own unmixed and original 
messages, as to-day. 

And all this excellence of result has been secured with- 
out the destruction, or even disturbance, of a single 
vital Christian truth. The Bible remains more intel- 
ligibly than ever the record of heaven-inspired messages 
to men. From cover to cover it is luminous with the 
revelation of God. The matchless portraiture of the 
Christ, a creation which it would be impossible for all 
the intellectual and artistic geniuses of the race to pro- 
duce, stands forth in clearer and more unquestioned 
light than ever before. The critical process has not 
disturbed, much less marred, a single promise or privilege 
which the older Bible held out to the Christian worshiper. 
In this record there still stand in untarnished beauty 
the doctrines of the Fatherhood of God, of redemption 
and forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ, and of the 
witness of the Spirit to pardoning grace and to the 
blessed and joyful fellowship of sonship in God's family. 
In this record, as richly as ever, are encouragements 
to prayer, assurances of helpful and sufficient grace for 
the Christian's battling life, grace to give patience in 
trial, victory over temptation, comfort in sorrow, and 
triumph in death. And, finally, like diamonds of the 
first brilliancy, set in the very crown of this revelation, 
there are pressed upon the vision of the saints assur- 



PREFACE xi 

ances of a blessed immortality and the inheritances 
of a heavenly hereafter. 

It is high time that the modern critical study of the 
Bible should be relieved in popular thought from its 
hobgoblin reputation. The teachers, the trained and 
competent scholars of the Christian Church, owe this 
service to the common good. It is with this convic- 
tion that I, though among the least of the scholars in 
Judah, have felt prompted to write this book. The critical 
movement, while rendering the highest and most indispen- 
sable service to Christian truth, has, often through misap- 
prehension, often through ignorant and vicious caricature, 
been made a stone of stumbling to the common thought. 
It is a high duty for men in responsible places as teachers 
in the Christian Church to lift this burden of popular 
misconception from this most beneficent work. 

It seems clear that very much of popular misappre- 
hension and consequent damage to popular faith in 
revelation might have been avoided if the leading scholars 
of evangelical denominations had made it their task 
to set forth clearly and calmly to the world the ascer- 
tained results of biblical critical study. Dr. William 
Sanday, perhaps the foremost authority in New Testament 
Christology in the world of English scholarship, says: 
"The theologians ought to carry the nation with them 
in each step of their own progress; they ought to warn 
the nation what is coming, and they ought to inform 
the nation as soon as it has come. It is perhaps true 
that we theologians have been rather backward in doing 
this, and that, as a consequence, some things have come 
to the nation in a more startling form and with a greater 
degree of seeming novelty than they really possessed." 



xii PREFACE 

Frankly, as to my own great denomination, I can 
but feel that we have not as yet reached a desirable 
adjustment to the critical movement. That such adjust- 
ment will finally come there can, I think, be no question. 
The ranks of both our ministry and laity are increasingly 
recruited by university and specially trained minds. Men 
who have received their schooling and culture at the 
very seats of critical learning cannot remain ignorant 
of critical processes, and they will not always remain 
silent. But thus far there would, I think, be little to 
justify the claim, if made, that from the official leader- 
ship of this Church there has emanated very much 
to encourage our younger educated minds in cultivating 
familiarity with modern processes of biblical critical 
study. It must be admitted by the observant student 
that, so far as American Methodism is concerned, in 
its attitude toward the critical movement, it is clearly 
not abreast with that of the mother Wesleyan Church 
in England. 

This Church, however, in view of the intellectual 
atmosphere in which it was born, in view of the broad 
intellectual tolerance of its great founder, in view of 
the attitude of some of its early and most famous scholars, 
ought to be among the very foremost of religious bodies 
to welcome and to encourage a reverent, yet a free, 
untrammeled, critical investigation in all fields of reli- 
gious truth. 

It is to be feared that many who join in the traditional 
laudation of Mr. Wesley as the great founder of Method- 
ism fail to share with or to appreciate his own broad- 
minded toleration. In his Journal of May 18, 1788, 
he makes this characteristic entry 1 



PREFACE xiii 

"I preached in the evening on, Now abideth faith, 
hope, love; these three. I subjoined a short account 
of Methodism, particularly insisting on the circum- 
stances, — There is no other religious society under heaven 
which requires nothing of men in order to their ad- 
mission into it, but a desire to save their souls. Look 
all around you, you cannot be admitted into the Church, 
or society of the Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Quakers, 
or any others, unless you hold the same opinions with 
them, and adhere to the same mode of worship. The 
Methodists alone do not insist on your holding this 
or that opinion; but they think and let think. Neither 
do they impose any particular mode of worship; but 
you may continue to worship in your former manner, 
be it what it may. Now, I do not know any other 
religious society, either ancient or modern, wherein such 
liberty of conscience is now allowed, or has been allowed, 
since the age of the apostles. Here is our glorying; and a 
glorying peculiar to us. What society shares it with us?" 

A name held in highest veneration in Methodism is 
that of Adam Clarke. His Commentary on the Bible 
was considered in its day a great and most exceptional 
monument of biblical learning. It represented enormous 
toil and research. Now, nearly one hundred years 
since the last volume was written, this work still con- 
tinues to have a steady sale. But it seems a fact very 
little known, in popular thought almost undreamed 
of, that long before the time when literary criticism 
had become a developed science Adam Clarke was a 
pioneer in biblical criticism. He may perhaps be justly 
regarded as the greatest "higher critic" that Methodism 
has ever produced. 



xiv PREFACE 

It was from the mental loins of broad, tolerant, and 
progressive minds like Wesley and Clarke that the 
intellectual life of early Methodism was generated. 
Surely, with such an ancestry, the scholarship of modern 
Methodism ought to be under no suspicion of being a 
laggard in critical thought, and it ought to be under 
no trammel in the exercise of a devout freedom in any 
critical pursuit of knowledge. 

Personally, I can have no doubt that Methodism 
could enter upon no era of its history that would be 
more unworthy of its origin and mission, that would 
be more destructive of its real power, that would invite 
a greater revulsion against itself of the best intellect 
of the times, than to organize itself into an ecclesias- 
ticism repressive of, not to say menacing to, the spirit 
of freest intellectual investigation on the part of its 
teaching faculties, its ministry, and its scholarly laity. 

So far as this volume is concerned, none could be 
more impressed with its fragmentariness than myself. 
There are many themes which would properly come 
under its title which I have made no attempt to dis- 
cuss. Such as it is, however, I am not without hope 
that the book may serve a useful purpose. It is written 
in a reverent spirit, with a desire only to serve the truth. 
The studies out of which it has grown have been to me 
a source of great illumination and inspiration. The 
literature traversed for its preparation is, for a large 
part, elsewhere indicated. In the final revision of my 
manuscript I am much indebted to the critical sugges- 
tions of my friend Dr. R. J. Cooke, official book editor 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as also to several 
other scholars of eminence among us. 



PREFACE xv 

The book itself has been forged out of intervals which 
have come as fragments of leisure in the midst of exact- 
ing duties. It has been written mostly in my home 
library, and in the quiet hours of the early night. In 
its preparation there has not been the high advantage 
of continuous opportunity for the task. I now commit 
it to the public. If I may know that it renders a help- 
ful service to any of its readers, I shall be most happily 
rewarded for the toil inseparable from its preparation. 

New York, February i, 191 1. 



INTRODUCTION 

To introduce personally to his readers the author of 
the following work would be, in view of his many years 
of varied and distinguished service in the Church of 
God, a wholly superfluous performance. He needs no 
introduction. Nevertheless, because of his widely ex- 
tended reputation as pastor, preacher, and successful 
Church official, enjoying the love and confidence of 
ministry and laity, it is not superfluous to set clearly 
before the reader the need and purpose of the thought- 
compelling volume which this discriminating thinker 
puts in our hands. 

On one occasion in the United States Senate, after a 
rambling debate, in which the main question was lost 
sight of, Webster suggested that as a captain after a 
storm which has obscured the sky for many days first 
endeavors to find out where he is, so the Senate should 
endeavor to find its latitude and longitude on the sub- 
ject before it. It is just such a service which the learned 
author of this work before us desires to render. 

It cannot be denied that criticism, science, and philos- 
ophy, all the factors which enter into what is termed 
Modern Thought, have created much confusion in the 
minds of many earnest and sincere believers and thinkers 
inside and outside the Church. They hardly know 
where they are. In order that the whole situation may 
be clearly apprehended it is necessary that they should 
see the past and the present, the wide difference which 
separates them; the character, purpose, and results of 

xvii 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

modern scholarship, and the effect of the whole move- 
ment on evangelical faith and the progress of the kingdom 
of God among men. 

To perform this service adequately is a large under- 
taking. Three essentials are necessary to such a per- 
formance: accurate knowledge, a judicial mind, and a 
vital experience of the saving power of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The revelation of God presents itself to every 
age, as it does to the individual, according to the capacity 
of that age to receive it, and every age, therefore, per- 
ceives the truth from a different angle. He is really no 
scholar at all, no matter what his technical knowledge 
may be, who thinks wisdom was born in the nineteenth 
century; who has not gathered up into his own thought 
the thinking of other ages, for not in vain have earnest 
thinkers through the centuries served in the temple of 
the Lord and inquired of him there. How essential it 
is that between conflicting results of critical investigation 
one should possess an unbiased mind, free as possible 
from the distorting influences of personal equation, will 
appeal at once to our highest reason. And yet, after 
all, it is, as Neander long since said, the heart that 
makes the theologian. It is essential that the scholar 
should be thoroughly grounded in criticism, science, 
and philosophy, and that he should maintain an intel- 
lectual hospitality to new data from every source, but 
above all it is absolutely essential that he should know 
Christ in the inner man, that he should know that he 
has passed from darkness to light through the power 
of Him who is the culmination of the progressive in- 
fallible revelation of God, for as a man thinketh in 
his heart so is he and of like character will be the product 



INTRODUCTION xix 

of his thought. That the author of this volume possesses 
these requirements will be conceded, and how success- 
fully he has accomplished his task the following 
weighty pages abundantly testify. His comprehensive 
resume* of the intellectual status of the dark periods in 
the history of civilization, reminding us of the brilliant 
generalizations of Buckle, his clear apprehension of the 
needs of the present, his unwavering faith in and strong 
defense of the fundamental truths of the Christian 
revelation in spite of all that negative criticism may 
have to say against them, the inspiration of the Bible, 
the essential divinity of the Lord Jesus, his atonement 
for the race, miracles, the necessity of the new birth, 
and in the ultimate victory of the truth of God mani- 
fested in redeemed humanity through the power of a 
living Christ over all forms of sin and error, will commend 
the work to thoughtful readers who wish to know their 
bearings and to those who desire to see from the stand- 
point of a competent scholar to what extent the doctrines 
dear to the life of every believer are affected by the 
results of biblical criticism. 

In thus recommending the work we do not, of course, 
indorse as the teachings of the Church every statement 
of the author, nor commit ourselves to all of his con- 
clusions, especially those relating to the Old Testament. 
Dr. Mains speaks for himself, and modestly disclaims 
any intention of speaking for the Church or for any 
institution. He simply reports the findings of eminent 
Christian scholars and pleads for tolerance of their 
views till they are found to be erroneous. With the 
methods of biblical criticism we may heartily agree, 
but it does not follow that we must therefore blindly 



xx INTRODUCTION 

accept all the supposed results. Certainly we shall not 
take away infallibility from the Bible and bestow it 
upon the critics. The history of biblical criticism only 
too clearly teaches that assured results often change, 
and it is no reproach to any Church that it does not 
revise its creed every time a biblical critic changes his 
opinion. But it is also true that no Christian teacher 
should dread either the methods or the results of genuine 
criticism. Biblical criticism is not the enemy, but the 
friend, of truth. It sifts the essential from the non- 
essential. The Word of God standeth sure. Dry leaves 
and withered twigs may be driven by the wind, but 
the trees of the Lord which are full of sap, the 
cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted, these will 
remain. 

It only remains to be said that evangelical scholarship, 
for which this book stands, has no sympathy or alliance 
with so-called Modernism, or with the program of Modern- 
ism. Starting from textual criticism and using the 
religious-historical method, Modernism may be used, on 
the theory of doctrinal development as first propounded 
by Newman, to account for and justify the doctrinal 
aberrations of the Roman Church, but it is utterly 
destructive of evangelical faith. Biblical criticism in 
the hands of evangelical scholars has no more affinity 
with Abbe* Loisy's The Gospel in the Church than it 
has with the theories of the old Tubingen rationalists; 
with Tyrrell's Christianity at the Cross Roads than it 
has with Schmeidel's Ultra-radicalism, or Harnack's 
Essence of Christianity, which is not Christianity at all 
but an amorphous incoherency between Unitarianism 
and Reformed Judaism. 



INTRODUCTION 



xxi 



With the author, we can only hope that this work, 
reverent in spirit, beautiful in simplicity of style, exact 
in statement of thought, and pervaded all through 
with the aroma of a living faith in the power of God's 
inspired Word, may be of the largest possible service. 

R. J. Cooke. 



THE MIDDLE AGES 



Alas! the lofty city! and alas! 

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day 

When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 

The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! 

Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, 

And Livy's pictured page! but these shall be 

Her resurrection ; all beside — decay. 

Alas for Earth, for never shall we see 

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free. 

— Byron. 

Nine hundred years after the fall of the Western Empire, in the 
reign of Pope Martin the Fifth, two of his learned servants, Poggius 
and a friend, viewing the ancient ruins from the Capitoline Hill, thus 
moralized: "The hill of the Capitol, on which we sit, was formerly the 
head of the Roman Empire, the citadel of the earth, the terror of 
kings; illustrated by the footsteps of so many triumphs, enriched with 
the spoils and tributes of so many nations. This spectacle of the 
world, how is it fallen! how changed! how defaced! The path of vic- 
tory is obliterated by vines, and the benches of the senators are con- 
cealed by a dunghill. Cast your eyes on the Palatine Hill, and seek 
among the shapeless and enormous fragments the marble theater, 
the obelisks, the colossal statues, the porticoes of Nero's palace; 
survey the other hills of the city, the vacant space is interrupted only 
by ruins and gardens. The forum of the Roman people, where they 
assembled to enact their laws and elect their magistrates, is now 
inclosed for the cultivation of potherbs, or thrown open for the recep- 
tion of swine and buffaloes. The public and private edifices, that 
were founded for eternity, lie prostrate, naked, and broken, like the 
limbs of a mighty giant; and the ruin is the more visible, from the 
stupendous relics that have survived the injuries of time and fortune." 
— Gibbon. 

the middle ages 

History records no such triumph of intellect over brute-force as 
that which, in an age of turmoil and battle, was wrested from the 
fierce warriors of the time by priests who had no material force at 
their command, and whose power was based alone on the souls and 
consciences of men. Over soul and conscience their empire was 
complete. No Christian could hope for salvation who was not in all 
things an obedient son of the Church, and who was not ready to take 
up arms in its defense; and, in a time when faith was a determining 
factor of conduct, this belief created a spiritual despotism which 
placed all things within reach of him who could wield it. — Lea, 
History of the Inquisition, 



CHAPTER I 
THE MIDDLE AGES 

The term "Modern Thought" implies a distinctive 
age or era in which the contents of this term must have 
had their development. It is of interest to inquire 
what kind of an age it was which preceded that to which 
we ascribe the birth of modern thought. It has long 
been the custom of the historian to divide the later 
centuries into what he is pleased to name the " mediae val" 
and " modern' ' periods. The boundaries which mark 
these periods may not always be easily defined, but 
they as certainly exist as do the bounds between night 
and morning. 

At some time in the fifth of the Christian centuries 
there culminated one of the most pregnant events in 
human history — the fall and dissolution of the Roman 
empire. This empire, the most potent ever erected by 
human skill; which had annexed to its scepter the terri- 
tories of the Western World, extending from the Eu- 
phrates to the Atlantic, and from the far North to the 
Desert of Sahara; an empire whose capital on the Tiber 
was known as the "Eternal City," which was itself 
immensely enriched and beautified by spoils of war 
gathered from all climes, and from whose throne and 
senate were issued the resistless decrees which governed 
the world; an empire whose statesmanship evidenced 
supreme genius for law and order, and whose brain 
gave birth to systems of jurisprudence which have 
taken a secure place in the codes of all subsequent 

3 



4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

civilizations; an empire whose armies were garrisoned 
in all cities and whose fleets covered the seas; an empire 
in which architecture and art, poetry, philosophy, and 
oratory so flourished as to secure for it for all time to 
come an imperishable and resplendent renown as the 
creator and promoter of highest intellectual values — 
this- -empirer~so vast, so mighty, so laboriously built 
and buttressed by the warrior, the statesman, and the 
jurist, fell at last under the stroke of barbarian hordes 
which had swarmed from the wildernesses of the North; 
went as helplessly as a disabled ship to its ruin or as 
might a frail framework built upon the sands before 
the smiting wrath of an ocean tempest. 

The fall of Rome, and that for which it stood, was 
nothing less than a world-tragedy. Whatever might 
ultimately ensue, the whole of Western civilization was 
for the present, and for centuries to come, as by a fatal 
decree of Providence, smitten into the dust. The cen- 
tral, the organizing and directing seat of the world's 
government had perished, and there was no power to 
take its place. The Church had learned largely the 
secret of Roman authority, and, while the territory 
of Europe was to be divided into petty and rival king- 
doms, and was to fall universally under the vassalage 
of feudalism, she was the only successor of Rome as 
asserting and securing for herself a central throne of 
authority and of spiritual and intellectual sovereignty 
over the people. In this function the Church was to 
render in those turbulent ages, and for all the future, 
a service of unmeasured beneficence. 

Had it not been for the authority and the moral 
inspirations of the Church in this period, it is difficult, 



THE MIDDLE AGES 5 

impossible, to imagine what might have been the fate 
of Europe, and, indeed, of mankind. The Church, as 
we too well know, was widely far from ideal. It was 
itself so paganized, so mercenary, so corrupt, that with 
its strongest hold upon Europe it was not able to rescue 
the centuries which were to follow from passing into 
history as the "Dark Ages." The Church, even though 
she furnished the central bond of authority and the 
chief moral shepherding of the people, was to give to 
Europe a control which was more barbaric than civilized, 
more pagan than Christian. 

The Church reared its enormous power over the 
people on the basis of a well-nigh universal credulity 
which unquestioningly accepted its teachings, its author- 
ity, and its penalties as of divine sanction. Its supreme 
domination in civil affairs was a matter of slow growth. 
In its far-reaching organization and unity it had great 
advantage. On the side of the state, Europe was broken 
up into small principalities between which there inhered 
little of unity and much of rivalry. Diplomatically the 
papal chair for the strengthening of its own position 
often formed alliances with the more powerful of the 
secular rulers, and not infrequently such alliances resulted 
in the subordination of the pope to temporal authority. 
In the ninth century Charles the Great placed one pope 
on trial, and in the tenth century Otho the Great de- 
posed two popes, and in their stead placed his own 
candidates upon the papal throne. The struggle for 
supremacy between pope and temporal ruler went on 
with varying fortunes until 1073, when Hildebrand, as 
Gregory VII, was consecrated pope. He was the dom- 
inant man of the age. His ideal was that the Church 



6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

should be absolutely free from subjection to secular 
power. The pope as the successor of Saint Peter was 
God's first representative on earth, and as such should 
be absolute sovereign of the Church and the supreme 
temporal ruler of the world. To the support of this 
ideal he brought great genius and strength. He intro- 
duced drastic reforms against simony and the marriage 
of the clergy. He forced rulers far and near to swear 
to him their supreme allegiance. He was the first 
pope to depose a king. He not only formally deposed 
Henry IV, the powerful king of Germany, but as a 
condition of restitution to his throne, compelled him 
to submit to the most humiliating stipulations. The 
king, divested of every mark of royalty, garbed in the 
sackcloth of a penitent, and barefooted, stood in mid- 
winter in the outer court of the castle of Canossa, and 
thus made formal submission. 

Henry's penitence, however, was more diplomatic than 
real. While in the very guise of submission, he was 
in his heart plotting vengeance. Through civil war in 
Germany he was soon able to repossess himself of his 
throne. Later, he laid siege to Rome, which ended 
in his receiving the imperial crown. Gregory VII fled 
from the city, only shortly after to die in exile. He 
was, nevertheless, one of the supreme minds of the 
Middle Ages. Endowed with indomitable will, with 
untiring energy, imperious in temper, fearless in emer- 
gency, magnetic in influence, instinctively a leader, he 
was really the creator of that political Papacy which 
was afterward to rule the world. 

The dream of Hildebrand came to its fulfillment 
under the reign of Innocent III, who ascended the papal 



THE MIDDLE AGES 7 

chair near the close of the twelfth century. Nobly 
born, possessing every advantage of wealth, and receiv- 
ing the highest education of his time, he was made 
pope at the age of thirty-seven. He carried to his 
place abilities of an imperial order. The conditions 
throughout Europe were ripe for the advent of a great 
papal leader. The civil governments were not strongly 
ruled, and the cry and desire of the people were toward 
the pope. The Crusades, which had now been in progress 
for a century, had resulted in vast enrichment to the 
Church, had greatly enhanced the power of the pope, 
and had fired the masses with most intense religious 
enthusiasm. 

Innocent III, in the spirit of a master statesman, 
was prompt to take advantage of all conditions. He 
first made himself supreme lord of Church and state 
throughout Italy. He appointed magistrates and judges, 
took charge of the courts, and personally dictated the 
conditions of the civil as well as of the ecclesiastical 
government. He gained for himself recognized leader- 
ship over the German empire, and reduced the kings 
of France, Spain, and even of England to a condition 
of feudal vassalage to the papal throne. By means of 
the Crusades he made his authority felt over the Greek 
Church, and was able himself to appoint the Patriarch 
of Constantinople, the highest seat of authority in that 
Church, by his own dictation. 

Innocent III died in the midst of his ambitious plans, 
but he bequeathed to his successors a Papacy in undis- 
puted control of Europe. He left behind him a code 
of elaborate and coherent principles of sacerdotal govern- 
ment which dominated in both Church and state. Not 



8 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

only the clergy universally accepted the will of the 
pope as a supreme law of action and of thought, but 
Christian princes throughout the Western world acknowl- 
edged the successor of Saint Peter as having rightful 
lordship over them all. 

It is well to note specifically some of the leading 
characteristics of this papal-governed world. In the 
hands of the pope, as the absolute head of the hierarchy 
and of civil governments, were lodged fearful powers. 
In the Church he was the supreme defender of the faith 
and of the clergy, the censor of morals, the source and 
the final appeal in all matters of justice. He could 
convene or disperse councils at will, and could confirm 
or abrogate their decrees according to his own decision. 
In civil matters he could issue dispensations modifying 
or setting aside human laws. 

The pope was not only the supreme judge of the 
faith, but he had unlimited authority to employ agencies 
for the detection, the correction, and the extirpation 
of heresy. And the means employed for this purpose 
are the standing Inferno of history. The Inquisition 
and its abuses are the infamy of the Middle Ages. The 
nations of Europe were policed with spiritual detectives, 
heresy hunters, who finally, for reasons most trivial 
and often most vilely mercenary, were only too ready 
to accuse even the innocent of holding views that were 
treasonable against the spiritual government. Under 
the high pretext of keeping the Church pure, the in- 
quisitor laid far greater emphasis upon dogma than upon 
character. One might be morally dissolute and pass 
unchallenged; but if he were suspected of being a free- 
thinker, or of holding unsound views, he was at once 



THE MIDDLE AGES 9 

a fit subject for the rack or for the stake. Thus, under 
the fearful enginery of the Church, the spirit of free 
investigation was everywhere terrorized and strangled. 
It was a fatal sin for one to hold independent opinions 
of his own. In the infliction of penalty the Church 
employed the arm of secular power; it being itself too 
holy to stain its own hands with blood, found it most 
convenient to employ as its jailer and its executioner 
its servile instrument, the civil government. 

The real terror of the Inquisition as wielded is indescrib- 
able. Its agents became at once the accusers and 
the judges of its victims. It instituted crusades of 
extermination against the Albigenses and the Waldenses. 
It planted the Lowlands with stakes and deluged them 
with blood. It was its spirit which in France finally 
instigated the massacre of Saint Bartholomew. In Spain, 
under the single administration of Torquemada, nearly 
nine thousand people were condemned to the flames, 
six thousand five hundred were burned in effigy, and 
more than ninety thousand were subjected to various 
penalties. This relentless cruelty against human life 
and reason spread itself as far north as Scandinavia and 
the British Isles, and its scourge overran the lands of 
Germany and Italy. It became the instrument of in- 
satiate greed, serving vastly to enrich the Church. 
Its persecutions enforced the migration of the rich 
Jews and Moslems from Spain, their properties being 
confiscated as revenues to the papal treasury, thus 
depopulating whole towns and provinces and putting 
a blight upon the commercial prosperity of the nation. 
The Inquisition spared nobody. Like a creeping plague 
it became a terror alike to princes and to the most power- 



io MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

ful dignitaries of the Church. It assassinated the 
intellectual life of Europe. It condemned Roger Bacon 
as a magician and sent him to prison; it arrested Galileo 
and forced his recantation of the truth; it murdered 
Giordano Bruno, and burned Huss and Wycliffe at 
the stake. 

The Inquisition established an "Index Expurgatorius" 
against literature. It was as careful to destroy heretical 
books as it was to burn their authors. It early dis- 
covered that the Bible was a dangerous book to be 
in the hands of the people, and its circulation was for- 
bidden. As late as 1558 Philip II denounced the penalty 
of death upon any of his subjects who should be found 
even to possess a book forbidden by the Inquisition. 

The power of excommunication was another fearful 
instrument in the hands of the pope. He could absolutely 
shut the doors of the kingdom of heaven against any 
offending soul. The man excommunicated was to be 
regarded as a social and moral outlaw, one without 
religious or civil rights, whose property might be con- 
fiscated; and perdition everlasting was his certain doom 
unless through his abject repentance the Church should 
mercifully restore him to favor. The authority to 
excommunicate was used by the bishop within his 
diocese as well as by the pope for the Church at large. 

The interdict was a decree issued against a given 
territory, whether a city or an entire kingdom, for the 
purpose of forcing that territory or its ruler to sub- 
mission. The interdict during its force practically put 
a stop to the functions of civil government, and the super- 
stitious were made to feel that the very province which 
they inhabited was under the blight of a divine curse. 



THE MIDDLE AGES n 

It is needless to say that the tremendous power of 
excommunication and of the interdict were often most 
absurdly and viciously exercised. It is a matter of 
record that letters conferring the power of excommuni- 
cation were sold for money, and the authority itself 
was often used for humiliating a rival or for purposes 
of extortion. 

The papal hierarchy was, in general, composed of 
cardinals, primates, bishops, and priests. The cardinals 
ranked next to the pope, and were supposed to be his 
direct advisers. The primates were in charge of what 
might be called the court or national churches. It 
was their function to preside over state councils of the 
Church, over the higher ecclesiastical courts, to con- 
firm the election of bishops and archbishops within their 
territory, to perform the coronation of kings and queens, 
and, in general, as the pope's representatives, to direct 
the interests of the Church within their respective states. 
The archbishops presided over territories each of which 
included several bishops. They superintended the election 
and consecration of bishops, called and presided over 
synods, heard appeals from the lower episcopal courts, 
and exercised a general supervision of the Church within 
their respective districts. 

The bishop was simply a lesser pope within his diocese, 
exercising the powers of a sovereign over priests and 
people. While supervising the churches of his diocese, 
he had his own distinct church, the cathedral, which 
was usually the largest and most beautiful edifice in 
the diocese. He was regarded as a direct successor 
of the apostles, and his authority applied to nearly all 
questions of interest to the community. By virtue of 



ia MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

landed grants placed at the disposal of his office he 
was vested with all the rights of a feudal lord, and thus 
he became a potent factor in secular as well as in 
ecclesiastical affairs. 

No authority in the Church, however, from the pope 
down to the last bishop, so far as direct power over 
the people was concerned, wielded such influence as 
the priest within the circle of his parish. He alone 
came in direct contact with the masses. He performed 
all the rites and duties of the parish minister, absolving, 
baptizing, marrying, and burying the people. The sac- 
raments, which were the instruments of salvation, he 
could withhold or administer at his own option; thus 
he held in his hand the destiny of the very souls of 
men. Presiding over the auricular confession, he was 
the recipient of the most secret confidences of his parish- 
ioners, deciding their very consciences and conduct, 
the personal dispenser of their eternal salvation. Sep- 
arated by the sacred and mysterious rites and authority 
of ordination, living the life of a celibate with no bride 
save the Church, to which he gave himself in supreme 
devotion, he moved among the people as a shepherd 
sent from God, at once their protector and guide, yet 
at the same time carrying at his girdle the keys by 
which he might shut against them the very gates of 
heaven. It is difficult to conceive of any relation that 
would appeal more potently to the hopes and fears, 
to the interests and motives of the human soul than 
that of the parish priest of the Middle Ages. He held 
a position which even princes might envy. He was as 
one who stood in the very place of God. 

If now we remind ourselves that all ranks of the 



THE MIDDLE AGES 13 

hierarchy, from the pope to the parish priest, were not 
only invested with the sanctions of divine authority, 
but had absolutely at command in their respective 
spheres the laws, the courts, the agencies and instru- 
ments of penalty against the transgressor, that the 
secular arm of the state was always ready to wield 
the sword in obedience to the demand of the Church, 
then we are prepared to realize in some vivid measure 
how absolute was the despotism, and how terrible for 
good or evil was the rule of the Church over the human 
mind. 

These were ages of barbaric habits and cruel ideals. 
The Church itself was dominated by a spirit of despotic 
intolerance. The great masses of the people were densely 
ignorant. The priesthood in all ranks was in great 
numbers immoral, mercenary, unscrupulous, ravening 
wolves in sheep's clothing, wholly unfit in personal 
character to be ministers and leaders in holy things. 
Still, it is impossible to overstate the values of the 
solidarity and the conceded authority of the Church 
rule over those turbulent ages. The territory of the 
Roman empire, in which the reign of law was felt and 
respected to its uttermost bounds, was broken into 
rival and petty sections in which the spirit of the 
freebooter was largely abroad; and so far as civil rule 
was concerned, if this had been all, whole lands might 
have been swallowed up in the confusion and ruin of 
anarchy. But in such an age as this the Church, lifting 
her scepter above all civil powers, and girt with the 
authority of omnipotence, impressing kings and subjects 
alike that she was the dispenser of both the vengeance 
and mercy of heaven, put a sway over the barbarous 



i 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

and superstitious masses which was at once both terri- 
ble and beneficent. 

The Church as a theocratic organism gathered under 
her own scepter the territories coextensive with those 
of the former empire, and throughout all the diversified 
peoples of Europe she inspired and maintained a fear 
of her authority such as was never exceeded by the 
awe of the empire in the days of its most imperial sway. 

It is to be said to the credit of this Church, bad as 
it was, that, through long ages otherwise dark and 
barbarous, she made herself beneficently felt as the 
fountain of the best law, order, and justice ; the expounder 
of highest civil rights and best social virtues ; the most 
perfect promoter of domestic purity and of family 
piety; the greatest inspirer of charitable deeds known 
to that benighted world. Poor in general as were her 
spiritual life and moral example, there was no period 
in which she did not develop eminent examples of saint- 
hood, and, however dark the age, in some of her excep- 
tional cloisters, at least, the lamp of human learning 
was never permitted to grow dim. 

In this preliminary chapter I have given much space 
to consideration of the Church. There can be no intel- 
ligent view of the Middle Ages, especially of the later 
period, without an understanding of the relations of 
the Church to the entire situation. It should not be 
assumed that even in these later times the authority 
of the Church went everywhere unchallenged. The 
drastic and widespread measures adopted for the extir- 
pation of heresy, for the suppression of the freedom of 
thought, themselves witness eloquently to a wide and 
persistent protest which uttered itself against the intol- 



THE MIDDLE AGES 15 

erance of her rule. Even then there was a growing 
sense of individuality. Very many with awakening 
intellects were in an attitude of skepticism, of irreverence 
and mental independence toward the claims of the Papacy. 

The standards of education as compared with those 
of the present day were at the best relatively poor and 
fruitless. The masses grossly illiterate, their religious 
teachers for the most part intellectual bigots, there 
was, and could be, no such fact as a general education 
among the people. The theological training of the 
priest did not necessarily require more than that he 
should be able to construe his breviary, read a little 
Latin, and be able to say mass. The arts and the 
sciences, such as they were, had either fallen into des- 
uetude or were little cultivated. Yet it remained true 
that the universities scattered over Europe furnished 
centers in which was kept alive the spirit of scholarly 
investigation. Their scribes were making copies of, and 
were translating into their own thought, the choicest 
classical productions of the Greek and Roman ages. 
And there was in this, and in the kindred pursuits of 
these scholars, a large measure of intellectual emancipa- 
tion which not only voiced itself in these centers of 
learning, but which like a leaven was destined in time 
to pervade widely the thought of the people. In these 
universities there was cultivated that spirit of research 
and of mental independence which was the sure fore- 
tokening of a new era of intellectual enlightenment and 
spiritual liberty for mankind. 

In material conditions, while the Church was enor- 
mously rich, literally owning so much of Europe as to 
make her the mightiest secular power in the world, 



1 6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

and while her privileged sons vied with the most power- 
ful princes in luxurious living, the conditions which 
enveloped the people were crude and barbarous. The 
splendid military roads and public improvements of the 
empire had fallen into disuse. In these ages there were 
no public libraries, no enlightening press, no vehicles 
of rapid intelligence as between peoples. The masses 
were treated as vassals; their highest duty was that 
of unquestioning submission to the Church and of 
supreme obedience to their feudal masters. The world 
of that day, with the most ameliorating light which 
we may throw upon it, was indeed dark, cruel, barbaric. 
Yet it was from the background of such a world as 
this that the new and modern age — an age whose intel- 
lectual light is as the noonday, and whose spiritual 
liberty is that of the sons of God — was to emerge. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



17 



The metaphor of Renaissance may signify the entrance of the 
European nations upon a fresh stage of vital energy in general, imply- 
ing a fuller consciousness and a freer exercise of faculties than had 
belonged to the mediaeval period. . . . The Revival of Learning must 
be regarded as a function of that vital energy, an organ of that mental 
evolution, which brought the modern world, with its new conceptions 
of philosophy and religion, its reawakened arts and sciences, its firmer 
grasp on the realities of human nature and the world, its manifold 
inventions and discoveries, its altered political systems, its expansive 
and progressive forces, into being. ... It is, therefore, obvious that 
some term, wider than Revival of Learning, descriptive of the change 
which began to pass over Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
centuries, has to be adopted. That of Renaissance, Renascimento, or 
Renascence, is sufficient for the purpose, though we have to guard 
against the tyranny of what is, after all, a metaphor. We must not 
suffer it to lead us into rhetoric about the deadness and darkness of 
the Middle Ages, or hamper our inquiry with preconceived assump- 
tions that the rebirth in question was in any true sense a return to 
the irrecoverable pagan past. Nor must we imagine that there was 
any abrupt break with the Middle Ages. On the contrary, the 
Renaissance was rather the last stage of the Middle Ages, emerging 
from ecclesiastical and feudal despotism, developing what was original 
in mediaeval ideas by the light of classic arts and letters, holding in 
itself the promise of the Modern World. It was, therefore, a period 
and a process of transition, fusion, preparation, tentative endeavor. 
And just at this point the real importance of the Revival of Learning 
may be indicated. That rediscovery of the classic past restored the 
confidence in their own faculties to men striving after spiritual freedom; 
revealed the continuity of history and the identity of human nature in 
spite of diverse creeds and different customs; held up for emulation 
master works of literature, philosophy, and art; provoked inquiry; 
encouraged criticism; shattered the narrow mental barriers imposed 
by mediaeval orthodoxy. — J. A. Symonds. 



iS 



CHAPTER II 
THE RENAISSANCE 

The term " Renaissance' ' means literally a new birth. 
It has come to be historically used as designating the 
period or processes through which the modern order 
was evolved from conditions mediaeval. It has been 
common to make it a synonym for that great intellectual 
movement which characterized the morning of modern 
history, namely, the revival throughout Europe of 
classical learning. It should include all this ; but strictly 
the term, if it shall be used to cover the period and 
movements through which modern history had its birth, 
must be made to mean much more than simply a revival 
of ancient learning, however significant such a revival in 
itself. It must be so enlarged as to cover the birth 
of entirely new conceptions of civilization, of new 
ideas of both Church and state, of a newly awakened 
sense of man's individual worth, of the growing respect 
which the individual came to entertain as to the validity 
of his own intellectual processes, and, in matters of 
conduct, of his privilege to obey his own conscience 
rather than submit himself unthinkingly to the demands 
of a theological despotism. 

The Renaissance meant the advent of radically new 
ideas concerning both the government and the individual, 
ideas which to the mediaeval mind would have seemed 
treasonable as against a divine order. In government 
the dominant thought of the Middle Ages was that of 
a "Holy Roman Empire" under the sway of an indivisible 

19 



20 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Church. Under the newborn order the institutions of 
feudalism were either to become extinct, or were to 
become remodeled and absorbed into the functions of 
a larger statehood. It was the beginning of an era 
which was to witness for Western civilizations the 
establishment of broad and stable governments which 
should be ministered largely in independence of ecclesi- 
astical domination. 

So far as the individual was concerned, in the most 
vital things of life and destiny he had no primary right 
to either independence of thought or of conscience. 
An overshadowing and inquisitorial ecclesiasticism had 
so far assumed the functions of both as to make the 
individual a mere automaton in its hands. In the 
period of the Renaissance a new spirit was born under 
whose touch the mediaeval Church was shorn forever 
of its absolute despotism over human thought, and 
under the inspirations of which the individual was to 
awaken to a sense of his independent values and to 
his sovereign right freely to exercise his own reason 
and conscience. 

The period was not only characterized by a wide 
revival of classical learning, by the birth of new and 
great ideas concerning the functions of government and 
the intellectual and moral rights of man; but it was also 
signalized in a marvelous way by new discoveries and 
inventions which were to prove mighty factors in giving a 
new direction to history and a new character to civilization. 

It will be profitable briefly to indicate and review 
some of the distinctive features of this era of transition. 
In speaking of the revival of learning as a chief feature 
of the Renaissance, it must be borne in mind that the 



THE RENAISSANCE 21 

rise of this movement was by no means simultaneous 
in all the lands which it finally affected. The Italian 
soil, as if made vernal by its southern sun, was the first 
on which enthusiasm for the new learning was to become 
a popular fashion. The Italian was the lineal descendant 
of the ancient Roman, the Roman who was at once 
the inheritor of Grecian culture and of an age which 
was both classical and golden in his own land. The 
Italian mind was precocious, and it seems but natural 
that its susceptibilities should be first to respond to the 
newly awakened sense of intellectual freedom. 

The capture of Constantinople by the Turk in 1453 
resulted in the migration of many Grecian scholars 
to the cities of Western Europe. This fact contributed 
greatly to the attainment of Grecian scholarship, and 
its pursuit was eagerly coupled with that of the Latin 
classics by Italian students. The desire for classical 
learning was pervasive. The rediscovery and new-found 
possession of the exhaustless treasures of ancient thought 
awakened a new sense of human values. Ages that 
were called pagan, and which were utter strangers to 
that kind of ecclesiastical censorship which for centuries 
had held Europe in its thrall, were newly opened to 
view, and they were found to be vocal with the wisdom 
and song of genius, rich in products of a matchless 
art. The ancient learning thus reproduced did not 
carry the mind much away from the life of earth; its 
rhapsodies were not inspired by monkish visions of 
some unknown and inaccessible heaven. It emphasized 
the life that now is, magnified its pleasures, and irre- 
sistibly lured its lovers into realms rich in intellectual 
and aesthetic delights. 



22 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

The result of the new nurture was to beget a temper 
the very opposite of that servile type which the repressive 
tyranny of the Church had bred in the popular mind, 
a temper which has been well expressed by the word 
1 ' humanism.' ' Humanism meant the reclaiming for man 
of the values of the present world, a rediscovery of the 
fruitfulness and dignity of the human intellect in connec- 
tion with the things of time, the reappropriation of the 
earth and its treasures for human uses and enjoyment. 

In the meantime Italy had become the schoolmaster 
of Europe in all departments of polite learning. Scholars 
of all nations flocked to her schools. In literature the 
best classical models, were earnestly studied, and they 
lent themselves to the creation of new intellectual tastes 
and standards. This revival of ancient learning was 
accompanied by great awakening of the sense of things 
beautiful in nature. It was this period which pro- 
duced many of the great masters in painting, in sculp- 
ture, in architecture. It was the age of Raphael, of 
Da Vinci, of Titian, of Michael Angelo, of Brunelleschi 
and Donatello. In Italy the Renaissance especially 
wrought itself out through a wide revival of classical 
learning, through the awakening of immortal art, all 
of which tended to beget in the popular mind a love 
of things purely temporal coupled with a wide indiffer- 
ence to the higher claims of the spiritual. The spirit 
of humanism wrought reactions both in the Church 
and in general thought which in the end, whatever the 
intellectual illumination of the times or the outward 
show of refinement, were accompanied by a moral laxity 
of society second only to that which centuries earlier 
had prepared the dissolution of the empire. 



THE RENAISSANCE 23 

In the north of Europe, in Germany, in the Lowlands, 
in France, and in England, the Renaissance entered, 
though much later in the order of time, to work out 
far different results than in Italy. Spain, of all coun- 
tries north of the Alps, was least molded by the new 
spirit, because here, more than in any other country 
of Europe, the reign of the Inquisition persisted. France 
was doubtless more than any other state the recipient 
of the direct overflow and influence of Italian culture. 
In Germany the revival of learning, while represented 
by great secular scholarship, was characterized by a 
moral earnestness which finally found its irresistible 
expression in the Reformation, a movement which, far 
more than any which had preceded it, meant the intel- 
lectual and spiritual emancipation of northern Europe. 
The influence of the Reformation, under quite diverse 
types, wrought the most powerful changes in intellect 
and faith not only in Germany, but throughout Switzer- 
land, France, and the Lowlands. 

England, separated from the continent, was the last 
to receive and to be benefited by the Renaissant revival. 
To this country the movement brought both a great 
religious reformation and a marvelous birth of intellectual 
life. From the one was born the Protestant Church 
of England, and afterward Puritanism. From the other 
there finally sprang one of the most resplendent eras 
in the intellectual history of the modern world — the 
age of Elizabethan letters. 

The general effect upon Europe and the world of 
the renaissance of learning in these centuries cannot 
be stated in a single term. It meant not simply a 
widely awakened taste for and a repossession of ancient 



24 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

learning; it meant also a departure of the human mind in 
the direction of new conquests, in the pursuit of new dis- 
coveries. It meant the birth of new civilizations, of new 
faiths, of new philosophies, the summoning to life of the 
spirit of creative invention, the advent of a new and 
unprecedented era of arts and industries, an indefinite 
enlargement upon human vision of the universe itself. 

In the same general period several great events 
occurred which were the indispensable auxiliaries to 
the new awakening of mind. Two events of inseparable 
and immeasurable importance were the manufacture of 
paper and the invention of printing. The art of paper- 
making in a simple form seems to have been known 
by the Chinese even before the Christian era. Paper 
was somewhat extensively used by the Arabs as early 
as the eighth century, but its manufacture for general 
use cannot be said to have been introduced into Europe 
before the fourteenth century. The origin of printing 
as a practical art is more or less wrapped in obscurity. 
It is clear that it did not yield much utility before the 
latter part of the fifteenth century. 

The origin of gunpowder, though an invention of 
incalculable consequence to civilization, is another event 
hidden in obscurity. Its introduction into Europe as 
an agency of warfare may be dated in the fourteenth 
century. The mariner's compass, as the invention of 
paper, originated with the Chinese; but its acquisition 
by the European navigator in the fifteenth century 
was an event of greatest importance. From thence 
it was to play a most signal part in giving to man a 
mastery of the seas. It was in this period that the 
first really great voyages of exploration were made — 



THE RENAISSANCE 25 

that by which Columbus discovered America, the round- 
ing of the Cape by Diaz, and the finding of a sea-passage 
to India by Vasco da Gama. 

The events thus briefly noted are in their consequences 
to be reckoned among the most momentous in history. 
The combined arts of paper-making and of printing 
were to revolutionize the entire appliances of education, 
to destroy all star-chamber and priestly- monopoly of 
the things of the intellect, and ultimately to make 
accessible to a universal democracy all the fruits of 
human learning. The introduction of gunpowder was 
not only utterly to change the methods of warfare, 
to place in the hands of civilization a weapon against 
which barbaric invasions could be broken and repelled, 
but it was the most important step in the evolution 
of those terrific armaments and navies the appalling 
possibilities of which as agencies of destruction go far 
to-day toward preserving a perpetual truce of peace 
among the nations of the earth. 

It is impossible to measure the historic consequences 
which were to ensue from the new conquest of the seas. 
This all meant not simply an immense widening of 
man's vision of the world, the substitution by com- 
merce of the oceans in place of a single inland sea, the 
removal of the mercantile supremacy of Europe from 
Italy to nations bordering on the Atlantic: it meant 
the introduction of a new era of world-wide intercourse 
between the nations of mankind. The passage to India 
was an initial and prophetic movement in the great 
drama of governmental, commercial, and philosophic 
interest as enacted between the Orient and the civiliza- 
tions of Europe in the last four centuries. 



26 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

The discovery of America in the very morning of 
the modern world was an event fraught with supreme 
significance. It was like the opening up in the fullness 
of time of a rich heritage which Providence had held 
in reservation for a privileged age. The long and pain- 
ful agitations and travail of European thought had 
given birth to ideas which held in themselves the material 
for new charters of human rights; for new systems of 
government which should not be erected on the basis 
of the divine right of kings, but on the sovereignty of 
citizenship; for a free Church in which there should be 
recognition of the sacredness both of the conscience 
and reason of the individual worshiper. But in Europe, 
great as may have been the movement of mind, many 
and valuable as may have been the reforms wrought, 
there was no room for the successful trial of these great 
departures. Her territories were too much under the 
thrall of hereditary ideas; they who had the power to 
control her policies both in state and Church were them- 
selves so much under the dominion of tradition, and 
so little inspired by the vision of the seer, as to 
make it impracticable that anywhere within her 
bounds should be furnished an adequate theater for 
the working out of these new and needed programs of 
civilization. 

America now arose from behind the oceans as a ver- 
itable world of promise. On her virgin soil and in her 
free atmosphere there would be abundant opportunity 
for the realization of the ideas of liberty which had 
been born through the tribulations and in the dreams 
of the world's most prophetic minds. The day of great 
democracies was about to dawn in history. America 



THE RENAISSANCE 27 

was the only land in which these institutions could 
be successfully planted and their ideals fairly tried. 

Our brief and partial survey of the period of the 
Renaissance has revealed many new ideas and forces 
which have entered as factors into the making of the 
modern world. The fact of nationality, and the dis- 
tinct part which the individual nation was to play in 
influencing a general scheme of civilization, were ideas 
which had their development in this period of European 
history as never before. From the same background 
of thought there arose newly born the conception of 
the values of the individual. The value of the nation 
is finally to be estimated by the strength and worth 
of the individuals who are responsible for directing its 
life. We have noted some of the influences which 
contributed to this result ; but the worth of man as man, 
a sense of his intellectual possibilities, of his value as 
a distinct constituent in the social organism, of the 
sacredness of his life and rights — all of this received 
in this period a development hitherto unrealized. This 
period repossessed itself with marvelous alertness of 
intellectual treasures which for centuries had been 
practically lost to the world. A great wealth of ancient 
learning, as if recovered from its tomb, came back into 
possession of the human mind. All this brought with 
it a quickening of thought, an inspiration and broaden- 
ing of vision, out of which were to be born new literatures, 
new inventions, and the fruitful impulses of a new and 
universal progress for mankind. 

Wonderful inventions and the daring spirit of explora- 
tion combined not simply to give man command of 
great new forces, but to place in his hands the titles 



28 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

of new continents as the seats of future empire and 
of coming civilizations. Crowning all, the Reformation 
wrought a vast emancipation of the conscience from 
ecclesiastical tyranny and imparted an immense moral 
energy to the human mind throughout Europe. 

But conspicuously, even if indefinably, there entered 
into all these movements, as their very animating soul, 
a new creative spirit which, not less certainly than that 
which brooded over ancient chaos, and which more, 
perhaps, than any of the visible agencies which we 
may define, was to develop from the turbulent and 
diverse conditions of the times the new order of the 
modern world. No contrast can be more significant 
than that which is presented between the sixteenth 
and the twelfth centuries. We know, and can trace . 
many of the forces which wrought in this eventful field 
of history. But it remains that we must still acquaint 
ourselves with many underlying movements before we 
can truly appreciate that intellectual world known as 
"Modern Thought." 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 



29 



The recent excavation of the tombs of the Nile kings, and of the 
great cities of the Syrian plains, reveal a people at a high stage of 
civilization, five and perhaps seven or ten thousand years before our 
era. Their temples, their palaces, their libraries, their sculpture, 
their jewelry, their sanitary and plumbing arrangements even, tell 
that this remote day must have been but as yesterday compared with 
the distant time when troglodyte man left his bones, his weapons and 
instruments of flint, by the side of the remains of animals now in part 
extinct, in the caves wherein he dwelt. — Carl Snyder. 

The idea of evolution, like the true conception of language and 
grammar, took shape outside the field of biblical study. Yet the 
biblical doctrine of the kingdom of God is one of the main causes of 
the conception; for evolution was a social programme before it 
became a scientific hypothesis. The idea is not a trespasser upon 
the biblical field. — Professor Henry S. Nash. 

There are types of minds to which the idea of necessity brings a 
vague shudder, as at the closing of iron gates. At each great step in 
the development of our world-conceptions these emotional natures 
are stirred to revolt or fright. But if the larger knowledge seems to 
subtract alike from the individual and the race something of their 
old importance, we need not forget that this knowledge is ours, and 
has been dug out by the race itself. Perhaps this is the true wonder. 
In any event, let us not lose sight of the grandeur of the achievement; 
for in it the intellect of man has in some cases turned round upon its 
antecedents and the universe of which it is corporeally so infinitely 
slight a part. — Carl Snyder. 



30 



CHAPTER III 
SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 

Columbus was the discoverer of a new world. Luther 
was the apostle of a new liberty. 

The one was a prophet of the unknown. A trained 
admiral of the seas, he had a conviction that the world 
was a sphere, and that behind Western seas other lands 
were awaiting discovery. Inspired by this conviction, 
neither popular incredulity, ridicule, nor finally the 
spirit of savage mutiny could daunt his purpose. In a 
faith that made him invincible he aimed the prows of 
a forlorn little fleet into unknown waters, and, steadfast 
to his purpose, even when his ears were greeted by the 
murmurs of his suspicious and hostile crews, he sailed 
on and on till one day his anchors were cast on the 
shores of a new continent. That day might well be 
chosen as marking the real advent of modern history. 

The vision of the other, as in a lightning flash of 
inspiration, had come to see one of God's great truths, 
a truth carrying in itself a divine charter liberating the 
human conscience from the tyranny of error and of 
unholy priestcraft. The crucial scene is thus described 
by Carlyle: "The young emperor, Charles V, with all 
the princes of Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries spir- 
itual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to 
appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant 
or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on 
this hand; on that stands up for God's truth one man, 
the poor miner, Hans Luther's son. . . . Luther said to 

31 



32 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

the pope, 'This thing of yours that you call a pardon 
for sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is nothing 
else. God alone can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual 
Fatherhood of God's Church, is that a vain semblance, 
of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God's 
Church is not a semblance. Heaven and hell are not 
semblances. I stand on this, since you drive me to it. 
Standing on this, I a poor German monk am stronger 
than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on God's 
truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your 
treasuries and armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, 
stand on the Devil's lie, and are not so strong!' " 

And thus was the humble monk of Erfurt, in a su- 
preme psychological moment in history, the mouth- 
piece of a new emancipation for the human conscience 
and reason. 

The two incidents — the one of Columbus in the name 
of his sovereign taking possession of a new world; the 
other of Luther at the Diet of Worms standing alone 
in the presence of a world-ruling hierarchy to announce 
a new spiritual liberty for mankind — may be selected 
as fitting antitypes of the greatest, the richest, the most 
inspirational and prophetic inheritance which has yet 
come to the race: the world of modern thought. From 
the days of these great leaders the human mind has 
been in a constant and intensifying mood of explora- 
tion, in a mood to invade all accessible fields of knowl- 
edge; and less and less has this mood been satisfied 
with the mere decisions of councils or the dictates of 
official authority. The spirit of modern research is not 
greatly reverent of any mere tradition, however hoary 
its history. It is satisfied with nothing short of the 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 33 

truth, of all truth attainable. It seeks this truth from 
first sources. It searches the skies with a telescope and 
the solar spectrum; the earth with the microscope and 
chemical analysis. It values truth as nothing else, and 
for the truth will accept no substitutes. 

The world of modern thought as a superstructure 
rests upon foundations laid by supreme master-builders. 
It should be accepted without the saying that into this 
structure there has been freely wrought all material of 
truth which has descended from the past. It should 
be assumed by none that a slighting estimate can be 
put upon this inheritance. In quality of mind the 
ancient ages produced thinkers as keen-sighted and 
noble as any who have ever lived. In the realm of 
abstract thought Plato, the pagan, is without a peer 
among human thinkers. As teachers and exemplars in 
the spheres of moral insight, of holy worship, of right- 
eousness, and of lofty and commanding views of God, 
history pays supreme honor to the Hebrew prophets 
and to the long succession of Christian apostles and 
martyrs. 

So far as ancient thought is concerned, its inheritance 
is priceless. It has, however, been largely the function 
and the glory of the modern mind to reinvestigate all 
ancient thinking, to retranslate it into terms of present- 
day knowledge, so that, in distinction from all learning 
strictly modern, the scholarship of the present age has 
a better command of ancient literatures, religions, philos- 
ophies, and sciences than was ever before known. To 
use as an illustration the Bible: it is safe to say that 
its entire history, the atmosphere and environment in 
which its different books were written, the varied pur- 



34 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

poses for which the books were composed, the chrono- 
logical order of their appearance, the sources of their 
substance, their authority and the genuineness of their 
authorship — all this, and immeasurably more — is far 
better ascertained by present-day scholarship than was 
ever before possible. So much, in passing, as a just 
recognition of both the ancient thinker and the modern 
scholar. 

I now pass to a brief review of some of the more prom- 
inent of the creative agencies which underlie the dis^ 
tinctive world of modern thought. It may be said that 
these agencies are all of them scientific in their character. 

A fact of the first order of importance in the educa- 
tion of the modern world is that which brought to the 
human mind an apprehension of the infinite dimensions 
of the physical universe in which we dwell. Near the 
middle of the sixteenth century Copernicus, a German 
educated for the priesthood, wrote a book which was 
destined to create a radical revolution and a new era 
in the science of astronomy. In opposition to the 
geocentric theory of the Ptolemaic philosophy, a philos- 
ophy which had held sway in the learned world for 
fourteen centuries, he proclaimed the heliocentric char- 
acter of the solar system. In due order Galileo with 
his telescope came forward to lend powerful confirmation 
to the theory of Copernicus. There follow in succession 
the illustrious names of Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Newton. 
Brahe demonstrated as never before the relative posi- 
tions and movements of the planets. Kepler, by processes 
of incredible toil, so mastered the laws of planetary 
movements as to secure for himself historic title as 
the " Great Legislator of the Starry Heavens." It was 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 35 

left for Newton not only in his integral calculus to fur- 
nish a system by which the intricate and complex move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies could be reduced to accurate 
mathematical statement, but there remained for his 
later life the greater glory of developing the theory of 
universal gravitation. This theory, in its far-reaching 
consequences, has been fittingly characterized as probably 
"the most important single discovery in the history 
of science." It not only reveals the principles which 
decide the relative positions and movements of the 
heavenly bodies, but it furnishes the foundation on 
which rests the greatest of scientific generalizations — 
the unity of the universe. 

It is not necessary at this point to pursue this fas- 
cinating subject further, save to say that the Copernican 
astronomy has served to multiply upon human concep- 
tion by infinite measurements the dimensions of the 
physical universe. 

Another great movement of modern thought, one in 
every way worthy to keep company with that which 
has so enlarged our conceptions of astronomy, is that 
which furnishes demonstration of the immeasurable time 
through which the worlds have existed. The nebular 
theory of Laplace asserts that originally the vast space 
now occupied by the solar system was filled with a 
diffused and heated gas, from the consolidations of 
which, under the movements of gravity, the present 
solar universe was formed. The process of the con- 
densation out of which was finally evolved the present 
order required for its consummation indefinite ages. 
The least that can be said of this theory is that it was 
a daring flight of the scientific imagination. But the 



3 6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

real thing to be said is that the scientific world gen- 
erally accepts this theory or one that is tantamount 
to the same. What is more, this hypothesis of Laplace 
is found to be only a single factor in a philosophy of 
development under which the modern scientific mind 
seeks to define and measure cosmic processes. 

It may be -said- that in the closing years of the eight- 
eenth century geology fairly took its place of recognition 
in the family of sciences. But who shall portray to 
us the consternations, the mental agues, the hysteria 
of emotion, which arose among the fearful as this young 
science pursued its triumphal course? It is enough to 
say that no sane man of to-day calls in question the 
legitimacy of geologic science or the validity of its findings. 
But geology requires a scheme of earth-making which 
dates back for its origin untold ages. It tells us that 
man himself, though comparatively of late origin, has 
been a dweller upon the earth for a very long period 
of time. And this program for the world and man 
science accepts with unhesitating confidence. 

In the year 1882 the most epoch-making mind of 
the nineteenth century ceased its earthly activities — 
Charles Darwin. Twenty-three years earlier he had pub- 
lished a book, The Origin of Species, which, like a great 
plowshare, was to bury much of the vegetation of cur- 
rent philosophies under the ground. Personally he was 
one of the most lovable of men. While scientifically one 
of the best furnished minds that ever entered upon a 
great work of investigation, he was always shrinkingly 
modest in his estimate of himself. He never took 
pleasure in disturbing the religious or scientific convic- 
tions of his fellows. He not only brought to bear the 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 37 

sanest judgment upon all his investigations, but he 
coupled with his judgment infinite patience and toil. 
He was exceedingly hesitant lest he should make prema- 
ture announcement of conclusions reached. His great 
book embodying his mature convictions was long withheld 
from the printer, that in the latest light he might, if 
need be, revise his statements. His estimate of himself 
is expressed in the following: "My success as a man of 
science, whatever this may have amounted to, has 
been determined, so far as I can judge, by complex 
and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these 
the most important have been — the love of science — 
unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject 
— industry in observing and collecting facts — and a fair 
share of invention as well as of common sense. With 
such modest abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising 
that I should have influenced to a considerable extent 
the belief of scientific men on some important points." 

It was not, of course, to be expected that a philosophy 
so revolutionary as was that of Darwin, one threatening 
the destruction of so many cherished beliefs, should 
pass at once to acceptance even with the world of 
scholars. This philosophy merited the stoutest challenge. 
If it were false, it deserved instant and merciless over- 
throw; if it were based in the truth, it could afford to 
bide the time of its approval. And this philosophy 
was challenged, challenged all along the line with the 
biggest thunder of intellectual gunnery. It was attacked 
by every method known to dialectical warfare. Grave 
dignitaries from high seats of learning brought against 
it all their treasured logic and reason. It was cari- 
catured and travestied by every art of buffoonery. 



38 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

These travesties and caricatures became stock imple- 
ments on the lips of cheap platform lecturers who used 
them, as a juggler might use a charm, to awaken up- 
roarious applause from audiences whose members were 
ignorant of a single principle involved in the philosophy 
itself. It is sad to be forced to say it, but many a pulpit 
seemed to find it a cheap and easy way to vindicate 
its own orthodoxies by now and then holding Darwinism 
up to ridicule. It is safe to say that no intellectual 
movement ever passed to its triumph through a more 
trying gauntlet of protest than has the Darwinian 
philosophy. 

It is now more than fifty years since Darwin pub- 
lished his Origin of Species. The fortresses of opposition 
are silent and empty. Thought has had time for adjust- 
ments. The world of scholarship and of science is 
committed to the Darwinian philosophy. It is found to 
be a philosophy which explains more facts and solves 
more questions, and more satisfactorily, than any other 
known to human thought. It is found to fit into 
the great trends of natural history. As a law of 
development it takes its place naturally in a universal 
order along with the nebular hypothesis and geologi- 
cal evolution. It is seen to have an increasingly wide 
application as suggesting normal processes in the de- 
velopment of numerous sciences. Even the Christian 
theologian has ceased to fear Darwinism. It no longer 
suggests itself to him as in antagonism to a theistic 
faith. On the contrary, it suggests to him infinite 
enrichments of his conception of God's method with his 
universe. 

All this is far from saying that the philosophy known 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 39 

as Darwinism was elaborated to its present perfection 
by Darwin himself. Since its first announcement by 
the great author, the contributions of a half century 
of the world's best thinking have come to its enrich- 
ment. It seems, however, as certain of its place in 
universal thought as does the Copernican astronomy or 
the Newtonian philosophy of gravitation. 

At this point we may properly pause for a little to 
inquire as to the effect of the great mental movements 
above indicated upon some traditional beliefs, beliefs 
not simply ecclesiastical but firmly intrenched in the 
teachings of science as well. For many ages it was 
believed that the earth was the center of the universe. 
Above the earth, lifted not so very far away, the over- 
arching sky hung as a canopy. Attached to this canopy 
the stars were thickly suspended, and their chief function 
was, that of the sun to light the earthly day, and of 
the lesser stars to ornament the night heavens, and to 
relieve "the mundane darkness. In this view the entire 
heavens were subsidiary to the earth. Man in con- 
templating the physical universe could easily magnify 
his own importance in creation. He was indeed made 
but a little lower than the angels, and was crowned 
with glory and honor. He held the scepter of dominion 
over the works of God; all things of field and sea and 
air were put under his feet. He was the crowned citizen 
of the one world for which God had made all things 
else. 

But, how changed all this perspective in the light 
of the new astronomy! We now know that in the 
small family of our solar system alone the earth is but 
one of its minor planets, and that in the greater universe 



4o MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

it is but a mere sand-grain snuggling in its place on 
the shores of immensity. 1 

Modern science has not only infinitely enlarged man's 
conception of the universe in which he lives, but it 
has swept the Ptolemaic astronomy from the skies, 
driven it from its last refuge in human thought. This 
system, like a wrapped mummy, has been consigned 
to the museums of literary curiosity, where its chief 
use is to remind men who shall come after of the tragic 
fact that for nearly fifteen centuries the human intellect 
was held in the thrall of a great system founded in 
grossest error. 

The science of geology has likewise either revolu- 
tionized or utterly destroyed many cherished and age- 
long beliefs. Until within very recent times, a well-nigh 
universal conviction, held in common by science as 
well as by the ecclesiastical teacher, was that of the 
creation of the earth in six literal days of twenty-four 
hours each. The general interpretation of Genesis, 
though as is now felt quite needlessly so, made the 
Bible teach this view. Being clothed, as was supposed, 
with the sanctity of a divine revelation, this theory 
of the earth's origin was most religiously intrenched 
in human thought. Any attack upon its validity was 
felt to be a sort of treason against holy truth. The 
mental attitude of multitudes of good people was that 
if the claims of geology meant the destruction of this 
view, then geology itself must be a science falsely so 
called, something to be shunned by all lovers of the truth. 
But an enlightened geology has won its right of way, 

»As I shall recur more fully to the lessons of modern astronomy — see 
Chapter XIV — I do not here further elaborate this illustration. 



SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION 41 

and the six-day creation view has been consigned to 
the limbo of superseded beliefs. 

Another change in popular belief which geology and 
its kindred sciences have effected is with reference to 
the time of man's advent upon the earth. The old 
chronologies with childlike confidence started with the 
year 1, punctuating that year by the creation of Adam, 
and then by the stride of events walked easily down 
the centuries. According to their testimony, the first 
man was created about six thousand years ago. But 
now, cold history, to say nothing about geology, as 
deciphered from the monuments, proves man's existence 
long prior to six thousand years ago. The testimony 
of geology, upon the other hand, a testimony now ac- 
cepted in the court of science as indubitable, asserts 
that man for many times the period of six thousand 
years has been a citizen of the earth. 

In accepting these great changes in conviction wrought 
by modern scientific discoveries we must guard our- 
selves against any undue disparagement of man himself. 
We may remember that if the universe has been in- 
finitely extended in space, and immeasurably projected 
in time, it is still man's Godlike reason that has dis- 
covered it all. Man stands in his place under the uplifted 
heavens a being more divine than all the flaming suns; 
he walks the time-scarred earth, the single thinker 
who alone reads its ancient secrets, and writes the Bible 
of its revelations. 



"For though the giant ages hew the hill, 

And break the shore, 

And evermore 
Make and break and work their will; 



* 
42 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

"Though world on world in myriad myriads roll 

Round us, each with different powers, 

And other forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the soul?" 

Our query, however, is, if the thought of the past 
has made so great mistakes in its interpretations of 
nature, is it not also probable that the same thought 
may have made equal mistakes in realms of religion 
and philosophy? It is my purpose reverently to pursue 
this query. 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 



43 



From the infancy of the race there have been minds which, turning 
aside from the ordinary pursuits and passions of men, from the prizes 
of trade, from the clamor of war, from the pluckings of fame, have given 
over their lives to the search. Argonauts in quest of the golden fleece 
of knowledge and of truth, their voyages have penetrated to the 
remotest corners of the earth and reached out among the stars. . . . 
Civilization is their work; the modern world is in some sense their 
creation. Amid the destruction and decay that attends all else from 
human hands, their achievements remain. The fabrics of the king- 
doms melt away; where Accad and where Carthage stood, no broken 
pillar lifts its lonely form to mark the spot amid the desert silences. 
The dust and dreams of Caesar mingle with the forgotten ashes of his 
slaves. But Archimedes' lever and Thales' magic stone, the theorems 
of Euclid and Hipparchus' starry sphere, the magnetic compass of 
the dynasty of Tsin, and the black powder of Berthold Schwartz and 
his forerunners, the pendulum of Ibn-Junis and Hans Lippershey's 
far-reaching, near-drawing tubes, the presses of Gutenberg and 
Coster, the balance and retorts of Lavoisier, James Watt's laboring 
giants of steam, Volta's pile, and Faraday's whirling magnets, are 
possessions imperishable while civilization, their fruit, survives. — 
Carl Snyder. 

The contrast between our age and that wherein the principle of 
Tradition found a free field is as broad as it can well be. Our com- 
merce is vast. The race is throwing all its accumulations of experience 
into one collection. Ideas and impressions are in eager competition. 
The study of religion is comparative. The body of facts within our 
ken is steadily and rapidly growing, and every increase of data deepens 
our feeling for the facts that are pressing forward into knowledge. 
Reason is forced to keep open house. Hypotheses cannot maintain 
a fixed form. — Professor Henry S. Nash. 

In the intellectual life there has been an unprecedented leap forward 
during the last hundred years. Individually we are not more gifted 
than our grandfathers, but collectively we have wrought out more 
epoch-making discoveries and inventions in one century than the 
whole race in the untold centuries that have gone before. If the 
twentieth century could do for us in the control of social forces 
what the nineteenth did for us in the control of natural forces, 
our grandchildren would live in a society that would be justified 
in regarding our present social life as semibarbarous. — Professor 
Walter Rauschenbusch. 



44 



CHAPTER IV 

PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 

Among the creative factors in the structure of modern 
thought large place must be given to the inductive 
philosophy. The inductive philosophy, which seems in- 
separably associated with the name of Francis Bacon, 
has, by its applied principles, done more than all pre- 
ceding systems not only to give man a supreme mastery 
over nature's forces, but to effectively transform these 
forces themselves into working agents for human uses. 
Greece, two thousand years before the days of Bacon, 
bred a school of philosophers as keen in intellectual 
insight, as fruitful in their power of mental abstraction, 
as any race of thinkers that has ever lived. The philos- 
ophy of these ancient minds has entered vitally and 
with large control into all subsequent philosophical 
thinking; but as yielding practical utilities fifty years 
of the inductive philosophy has proven to be of more 
value than many centuries of Grecian thought. The 
Greek philosophy and its successors were theoretical in 
their aims. They spent themselves in pursuit of ideals. 
They ministered alone to the pleasures of an intellectual 
aristocracy ever seeking excursions into realms of ab- 
stract truth and beauty, but filled with a lofty scorn 
of any spirit of invention which would utilize the forces 
of nature to promote the material comforts of mankind. 
"In my own time," says Seneca, "there have been 
inventions of this sort, transparent windows, tubes for 
diffusing warmth equally through all parts of a build- 

45 



46 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

ing, shorthand, which has been carried to such perfection 
that a writer can keep pace with the most rapid speaker. 
But the invention of such things is drudgery for the 
lowest slaves; philosophy lies deeper. It is not her 
office to teach men how to use their hands. The object 
of her lessons is to form the soul." The school of philos- 
ophy represented by Seneca thought that the highest 
use of science was not to give man practical dominion 
over the forces of nature, but to furnish him oppor- 
tunity to exercise his mind in the answering of subtle 
questions. 

On the other hand, the permanent glory and value 
of the inductive philosophy are manifest in its practical 
tendency to transform the earth itself into a paradise 
for man's abode. Macaulay has undertaken to sum 
up the philosophy of which he makes Bacon the great 
apostle in two words — utility and progress. On the 
plane of the industries, the arts, and the sciences, this 
philosophy is certainly largely to be adjudged as util- 
itarian. In its atmosphere the spirit of invention, the 
appliances of industry, discovery of the secrets of nature, 
the healing arts, added comforts in the home, improved 
material conditions of living — indeed, immeasurable min- 
istries for the enrichment of man's life upon the earth 
— have flourished and multiplied as never before. It 
is the very beneficence of this philosophy that it has 
put into man's hands the key to nature's wealth, and 
has shown him the possibility of securing for himself 
in this human life all the material comforts of an Edenic 
estate. But justice to this philosophy demands that 
we shall not limit its benefits to mere material condi- 
tions. As a system of applied thought it has vastly 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 47 

enlarged man's insight into the nature of things. It 
has intensified his thirst for truth. It has enlarged 
his confidence in the reliability of his own intellectual 
processes, and has done much in every way to separate 
the modern mind from that subserviency to imposed 
authority which clung like a paralysis to mediaeval 
thought. If we are to accept Macaulay's character- 
ization of this philosophy, then a far greater emphasis 
should be placed upon its genius for ministering to 
progress than upon its mere utilitarian character. Its 
ministry to real progress must be given the widest 
application. It is a philosophy which not only did 
much to break down mediaeval superstition, but which 
has contributed vastly on its intellectual side to the 
freedom, the virility and fruitfulness of modern thought. 
So far as Bacon is personally concerned, many mod- 
ern scientists and writers would dissent widely from 
Macaulay's estimate of his values. Bacon himself was 
certainly slow to give his personal adhesion to some 
of the most important of scientific truths. Dr. Draper 
has said of him: "Few scientific pretenders have made 
more mistakes than Lord Bacon. He rejected the 
Copernican system, and spoke insolently of its great 
author; he undertook to criticise adversely Gilbert's 
treatise, De Magnete; he was occupied in the condemna- 
tion of any investigation of final causes, while Harvey 
was deducing the circulation of the blood from Acqua- 
pendente's discovery of the valves in the veins; he was 
doubtful whether instruments were of any advantage, 
while Galileo was investigating the heavens with the 
telescope. Ignorant himself of every branch of mathe- 
matics, he presumed that they were useless in science 



48 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

but a few years before Newton achieved by their aid 
his immortal discoveries." The probability is, whatever 
Bacon's excellencies or defects, that even had he not 
lived at all the world would have duly come into the 
benefits of the inductive philosophy. 

To Immanuel Kant, more than to any other single 
mind, the modern world is indebted for a philosophy 
adequate to vindicating the rights of the human soul, 
the sacredness of personality, as against the growing 
and overshadowing tyranny of nature. He has been 
charged as an iconoclast and a destroyer of the strongly 
wrought systems of his predecessors, but the fact is 
that the philosophical systems which occupied the field 
when Kant appeared were none of them large enough, 
nor of the kind, to have averted the subjection of modern 
thought to a crass deistic materialism. Kant felt all 
the majesty of the "starry heavens/ ' but he also felt 
the Sinai of "moral law" within the soul. He felt that 
the two great voices, the voice of nature without and 
that of the moral law within, could not be in conflict 
with each other, and with the strength of a Titan he 
hewed his way through the mazes of thought to a rational 
vindication of the rights of the soul, of its individuality, 
of its dignity, as against a philosophy which would 
give to material nature an exclusive monopoly of being. 

COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS 

A study which has done much to revise traditional 
conceptions and to give enlightened views as to God's 
relations to the world at large is that of comparative 
religions. This study may now be designated as a 
science. The openness of the entire globe, a vast inter- 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 49 

world commerce, and the rapid-transit methods of com- 
munication developed in the last fifty years, all have 
furnished great opportunities to the student to secure 
first-hand acquaintance with the history, the literature, 
the social character, and the religious faiths and customs 
of all nations. 

A most fruitful agency in securing the data for this 
science is that of Christian missionaries, whose enlight- 
ened and benevolent work in all lands has given them 
not only exceptional opportunity to study the phases 
of the great religions, but has at the same time fur- 
nished them with most urgent motives for securing a 
thorough knowledge of the same. The zeal with which 
this study has been prosecuted is well illustrated by 
the story of Anquetil du Perron, a scholar born in 1731. 
As a student in Paris he acquainted himself with Hebrew, 
Arabic, and Persian. In the Royal Library a fragment 
of the Zend-Avesta fell into his hands. It fired him 
with so intense desire to learn the Zend and the Sanskrit 
languages that he enlisted as a common soldier to be 
sent to India, that there he might come in contact 
with regions of knowledge into which no European had 
entered. Modern appliances have made it easy for men 
of like spirit to study at first hand, at their very temple 
doors, all the great religions of the world. 

Among English scholars, Professor Max Muller was 
doubtless the most fruitful single worker in this field. 
He mastered the Sanskrit literatures, and translated 
the sacred books of India for use by Western scholars. 
In the process of this study the religions of the world 
have been placed, as in parallel columns, side by side 
with each other. Their points of resemblance as well 



50 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

as of dissimilarity have been most carefully developed, 
with the result that the outlook by the average Christian 
thinker upon the conditions of the religious world has 
not only been greatly broadened, but the process has 
necessitated much revision of previous thinking. 

One fact which has been clearly affirmed is that man 
universally is a religious being. It was an old con- 
ception, one, however, without standing in present 
philosophical thought, that religion is the creation of 
rulers and of priests. But religion is found to be too 
universal, too deep-seated in human nature, to give 
rational place to such a view. It is religion that ac- 
counts for the priest, and not the priest who is the 
originator of religion. The priest may have had large 
influence in directing, in degrading or ennobling, the 
modes of religious expression; but for such influence he 
has been dependent always and absolutely upon the deep 
and ineradicable fact of man's natural religiousness. 

The expression of the religious life is as varied as 
the tribes of men. The Bushmen in Australia, the 
Fetich-worshipers in the African jungle, in their methods 
of worship present the greatest contrast to methods 
which are in vogue before the high altar, and as voiced 
in the stately music and ritual of the Christian cathedral. 
The worthiness of view of the being to be worshiped 
runs through infinite gradations, from the most sodden 
idolatry to the loftiest conception of God as revealed 
in the Christian Scriptures; but in one form or another 
the religious feeling universally prompts men to wor- 
ship, nor are those in Christian or pagan lands who 
call themselves atheists, infidels, or agnostics an exception 
in themselves to this general law. Even such as profess 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 51 

to be without religion are inevitably influenced by im- 
pressions of forces in the universe not themselves, and 
to which they are subject; and their religion, blind as 
it may seem, is governed by the spirit in which they 
relate themselves to these forces. 

Another conviction which a growing acquaintance 
with the religions of the world has brought home to 
the Christian thinker is that God has truly revealed 
himself to all the tribes of men. He has not left him- 
self without witness with any nation. To all peoples 
in the measure of their capacity and desire to receive 
the truth concerning himself has God spoken. Nearly 
all of the historic nations have had their great teachers 
whose utterances to their age have carried messages 
truly divine. The customs and aptitudes of different 
peoples have given many diverse developments to their 
religions. In some cases — in most cases, indeed — the 
popular faith and practice have been mixed with such 
gross alloy of error as to make impossible any general 
and high religious attainment among the people. 

In Greece, for instance, the moral perception and 
teaching of both Socrates and Plato were such as worthily 
to rank them among the great prophets of the race. 
But there was something in the polytheistic atmosphere, 
and in the moral habits of Greece, cultured as it was, 
which made it impossible to develop in Attica under 
the prophetic leadership of a Plato, even had he been 
an Elijah, the high type of religion which was evoked 
in Judea under the moral inspiration of the Hebrew 
prophets. Judea in the creations of intellect and of 
art bears no comparison with Attica; but, on the other 
hand, the intellectual glories of Greece shrink when 



52 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

compared with the worth of the moral heritage which 
Judea bequeathed to mankind. 

While, then, there is left no room for doubt that the 
religion whose history and inspirations are furnished in 
the Bible is the highest and most valuable of which 
the world has knowledge, yet the study of comparative 
religions not only emphasizes the fundamental fact of 
man's common religious nature, but serves to impress 
upon the discerning missionary worker the wisdom of 
carefully seeking a common standing-ground of convic- 
tion from which he may lead the pagan worshiper to 
the perception and embrace of the better faith. It is 
not the first function of the Christian missionary to 
seek either to deny or to destroy the truths of pagan 
faiths, but to recognize and to utilize them as conditions 
of more surely winning the subjects of these faiths to 
the acceptance of the more perfect revelation. 

There have been some dark chapters in the beliefs 
of people of the more enlightened religions with reference 
to God's assumed discrimination in his dealings with 
the human family. The ancient Jew confirmed him- 
self in the belief that he of all humanity was God's 
elect and favorite son, that he was to be the inheritor 
of a paradise from which all other races were to be 
excluded. In more recent times the Papal Church has 
held the ban of mortal fear over entire nations by its 
pretense of holding the sole custody of the keys to 
human salvation. And, in the general Christian view, 
the conviction has largely been held that the nations 
outside the pale of Christendom were shut up to the 
hopeless doom of divine rejection. All such views, in 
the light of our larger knowledge of man's religious 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 53 

nature, and under the prompting of better conceptions 
of God's method with his world, are now more than 
ever felt to be in themselves most religiously provincial, 
inherently improbable, and unworthy the character of 
the Divine Father. Peter, under the special illumina- 
tion of the heavenly vision, was so far lifted away from 
his Jewish narrowness as to declare: "Of a truth I per- 
ceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every 
nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, 
is accepted with him." To Peter this judgment came 
as a revelation. Through the modern study of com- 
parative religions this same judgment is brought home 
in wide and rational confirmation to Christian thought. 

ARCHAEOLOGY 

The study of archaeology has within the last half 
century contributed vastly to our knowledge of the 
ancient civilizations. Strictly speaking, this science has 
had its entire development within the last hundred 
years. The ancient classical literatures, as long known 
to the world, may in part serve the ends of archaeological 
search; but the art of translating, for instance, the 
hieroglyphics on the monuments of Egypt and the 
cuneiform tablets excavated from the sites of ancient 
cities in Mesopotamia is all of very recent date. In 
late times it has been discovered that wherever any 
great civilization, however long now extinct, has flour- 
ished, there man has left records which interpreted will 
portray to us the mental and social qualities of the 
people, the institutions, civil and religious, of the ages 
which they represent. This science has greatly revised 
and enlarged the scope of historic measurements. Until 



54 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

within a very recent period nothing has practically been 
known of ancient Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt save 
as contained in the records of the ancient classics and 
the Bible. Archaeology has so resurrected these old 
civilizations as to give to the modern scholar a vivid 
and rich reproduction of the very lives of their peoples, 
their laws, their governments, their social and religious 
customs. Not only this, but it has pushed the dates 
of these civilizations far back into the ages. Against 
the background of a rich prehistoric age, dateless in 
its duration, Egypt presents a continuous history of 
seven thousand years, all its periods abundantly tested 
by archaeological records. The Babylonian civilization, 
probably not younger than that of Egypt, seems also 
to be proven as the fountain-source of the world's oldest 
art, law, and religion. 

In the language of Professor Driver: "Thus the last 
century has witnessed what is virtually the rediscovery 
and reconstruction of two entire civilizations, each 
beginning in an almost incalculable antiquity, and each 
presenting a highly organized society, possessing well- 
developed institutions, literature and art, and each 
capable of being followed, with gaps, indeed, in parts, 
but in other parts with remarkable completeness, through 
many centuries of a varied and eventful history. And 
whereas eighty years ago little was known of either 
nation beyond what was stated incidentally in the Old 
Testament, or by classical writers, now voluminous 
works descriptive of both are being constantly written 
and are quickly left behind by the progress of discovery." 

Syria lies between the territories of Babylon and of 
Egypt. Its lands, long before the age of Abraham, 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 55 

were frequently the scenes of the migrations and the 
camping-grounds of both these kingdoms. Indeed, both 
of these nations were old when as yet the Hebrew nation 
was unborn. It would not be reasonable to assume 
that the Hebrew people would not be largely the inher- 
itors, and greatly to their own shaping, of the culture, 
the customs, and the laws of these older civilizations. 
Of the facts in the case, as we shall have occasion to 
note, archaeology has much to say. 

BIBLICAL CRITICISM 

The science of biblical criticism, as we now know it, 
is also quite fully a development of recent thought. 
Indeed, the mental conditions which could make such 
a science possible did not exist until far within the 
eighteenth century. For many centuries prior to that 
time the Bible, so far as the people were concerned, 
had been in the keeping of an "infallible" Church. It 
was a structure too sacred to be profaned by the test- 
touch of science. Its messages to mankind could be 
safely given only through a priestly interpreter. It is 
true that before this period the Bible in Germany and 
in England had come, through various versions, much 
into the hands of the people. But even so, the heritage 
of tradition rested heavily upon its pages. If Luther 
and his successors in the Reformation appealed from 
the Church to the Bible, this appeal practically resulted 
in the installment by Protestantism of an infallible 
Book in the place of an infallible Church. The inductive 
philosophy was still in its infancy. Its application to 
literary processes was only as yet partial. The intel- 
lectual conditions were not ripe for the birth of new 



56 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

methods of Bible study. These conditions came to 
expression in the tempers of the eighteenth-century 
thought. In this century the traditions of the past, 
however hoary, went largely into bankruptcy. The 
mind of this century broke with the past. The eight- 
eenth-century thinker stood with his face to the future. 
The new mental movement was not priestly in its origin. 
It was characteristically a movement of the lay mind, 
a temper in which the layman first asserted his rights 
of independent thought. He had ceased utterly to 
believe in an infallible Church, or in the infallibility of 
any intellectual oracle of the past; but he came to his 
place with a great confidence, newly born within him, 
in the infallibility of his own reason. The mental atmos- 
phere of this age was charged with a kind of resentment 
against what was felt to have been a vast usurpation 
of organized authority against the inherent rights of 
the human intellect. This age, as no one which had 
preceded it, begot in the human soul an insatiate desire 
for truth; it was the age in which there first came to 
clear consciousness the spirit of modern science. For 
the first time really in history, the scholar, delivered 
from the fetters of tradition, confident in his own powers, 
felt free to pursue any path of investigation which 
might lead to new truth. In his new-found sense of 
freedom he accepted no prohibition as imposed by 
tradition. Indeed, if the mind is free at all to pursue 
truth, then it should be free, without fear or favor, 
to pursue all truth to its last hidings. 

This spirit began a new critical study of literature, 
of all literature which might be sufficiently vital to claim 
critical attention. The turning of this critical spirit 



PHILOSOPHY AND CRITICAL SCIENCE 57 

toward the Bible was not an exceptional thing. The 
Bible, by virtue of the great place which it held in the 
world's thought, by reason of its paramount claims 
on the human soul, invited in a preeminent degree the 
searchlight of this new critical spirit. It was in the 
very nature of the case that it finally, more fully, per- 
haps, than any other literature, should undergo the 
most searching and microscopic interrogation. To the 
mediaeval view the mood which prompted this course 
would seem like the laying of profane hands on the 
ark of the Lord; but it was, nevertheless, the mood 
from which was to be born a new consecration of human 
reason in the service of divine truth, and by which, 
as never before, the human soul should find freedom 
through the truth. 

I am deeply conscious that I have only partially 
and very imperfectly sketched the forces and move- 
ments out of which has come the world of modem 
thought. I must believe, however, that no one can 
have measured the bearings of facts so far indicated 
without being in some degree prepared not only for 
new methods of dealing with truth, but as well for 
great revisions of conviction concerning views which 
past generations have held as sacred and established. 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 



59 



Plato's books are his deepest thought eternized, lifted above the 
changes and the chances of the short Athenian day. Students have 
misread them, carrying into them their own wisdom and ignorance, 
making Plato speak a language widely different from his own. But 
only for a while. Sooner or later a great book becomes its own inter- 
preter. Pressing steadily upon the minds of those who love it, it 
creates at last a true taste for itself. The price the world has to pay 
for ownership of a great book is the labor of understanding it. And 
no matter how long the payment of the debt may be put off, sooner or 
later it must be paid to the uttermost farthing. 

So it has been with our Scriptures. Because the Church of an 
earlier time saw in them a value incomparable, and felt in them a 
power of God not to be withstood, she canonized them, made of them 
a Bible. And because the Church of our day, the selfsame Church, 
but living under changed conditions and facing new tasks, has the 
selfsame reverence for them, she is being led into the paths of criti- 
cism. In all this mental movement the Bible does not play a passive 
part. It is its own keeper. — Professor Henry S. Nash. 



60 



CHAPTER V 

SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 

Biblical criticism, in its very name, is to many a 
subject of exceeding sensitiveness. In entering upon its 
discussion, while I shall studiously seek to keep within 
the consensus of scholarly findings, I cannot but be 
aware that many devout souls are utterly unprepared 
by their own examination of the questions at issue to 
be much in sympathy with the subject itself. It is 
largely in the interests of such persons that I am prompted 
to write. I could greatly covet the ability so to pre- 
sent to these the truth, truth which I am sure must 
finally win for itself undisputed authority, as in no way 
to disturb the restfulness of their faith. I may not, 
perhaps, hope to succeed according to my desire. To 
any critical observer it is evident that in matters of 
faith most people are much under the influence of tra- 
ditional inheritance. Within limits this is healthful. It 
is possible to err in too great a readiness to receive 
new thought. An old faith should not be abandoned 
save for the best of reasons. No one should prodigally 
throw away convictions which he regards as valuable. 
But the truth seems to be that a majority even of the 
religious convictions popularly held are not such as 
have resulted from independent and painstaking thought 
put forth by persons themselves holding such convic- 
tions. The opinions to which many most stubbornly 
adhere, and in defense of which professing saints some- 
times too readily lose their tempers, are simply ready- 

01 



62 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

made articles which have been passed from the hands 
of others, and which have cost their possessors neither 
sweat of brain nor struggle of soul. I do not, of course, 
intend to assume that all individuals should be counted 
as competent safely to elaborate their own creeds. We 
are all more or less dependent, and rightly so, upon 
the teaching agency of the Church for safe exposition 
for both faith and conduct. The difficulty is that 
very many fail to make rational discrimination as to 
the assets of their faith. In the inventory of their 
beliefs they emphasize much that does not partake of 
vital truth. Their habit of mind is to attach a first 
importance to the nonessential thing. Having accepted 
the teachings of their fathers, if called upon by the 
advance of enlightened thought to surrender one of 
these nonessentials, they leap nervously to the con- 
clusion that the whole structure of their Christian belief 
is about to fall. 

We cannot prevent this habit of mind. It is per- 
sistent, and it does not characterize lay thought alone. 
There are many set in places of the leader and the teacher 
in Zion whose mental fixity seems to give no place of 
hospitality to new ideas. It is at least pathetic, not 
to say reprehensible, for men who stand in high places 
as religious teachers not to be in this day respectably 
familiar with the trends of critical scholarship as in- 
volved in the modern historical study of the Bible. 
Yet it sometimes happens that even the pulpit makes 
use, for instance, of the term "higher criticism" in such 
manner and relations as to betray the fact that its 
user has no adequate understanding of the phrase which 
he so easily utters. 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 63 

It may be admitted that there is a temptation to 
the weak man sometimes to exploit himself in this way. 
It is a trick of the cheap orator, whose eloquence thrives 
on fallacies, to appeal to the popular prejudice. This 
often makes it easy for the vociferous defender of the 
merely traditional to command for the time the ap- 
plause of the crowd. And it must be admitted that 
this man is not a pleasant personality in the situation. 
While he justly merits for himself the contempt of the 
surefooted scholar, yet with the popular jury his in- 
solence and craft are quite likely to secure a temporary 
verdict as against the knowledge of the scholar. Truth, 
however, in the long run, is sure to find its own vindica- 
tion as against all comers. The questions at issue are 
not such as can be decided by popular vote. They 
are questions for scholarship, and scholarship can afford 
to be patient. In all discussions of thought and of 
criticism the voice of the scholar is finally decisive. 

One should not be deterred from the pursuit of truth 
through fear of disturbing traditional thought. Truth 
has always been a disturber in just the proportion in 
which it has brought new messages for the revision and 
enrichment of society. Every forward movement which 
truth has led has meant the break-up and abandon- 
ment of old camping-grounds of faith. Multitudes of 
good people are disturbed and much put about every 
time civilization moves on and up to a better plane 
of realization and of thought. This is a part of the 
price which must be paid for true advancement. But 
advancement in the right direction, at whatever cost, 
is immeasurably preferable to stagnation. It is better 
for the individual that he be disturbed, irritated, stim- 



64 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

ulated by the truth than that he be content to live 
and die in error. 

The part that the individual promoter of new truth 
has to play in disturbing old belief may, in this respect, 
be quite out of harmony with what he himself could 
wish. Dr. George Salmon, late provost of Trinity 
College, Dublin, author of The Human Element in 
the Gospels, forcibly describes his feelings as follows: 
"Feeling myself to be quite free from bias, I was will- 
ing to try what the result would be of an impartial 
investigation of the composition of New Testament 
books, conducted with a complete independence of 
traditional opinion, as has been obtained in the case 
of the Old Testament. My notion was to take the 
three Synoptic Gospels, and, putting aside all Church 
doctrines as to their inspiration or authority, discuss 
their mutual relations as a mere question of criticism, 
just as if they had been newly discovered documents 
of whose history we knew nothing. I do not think 
that when I undertook this task I had fully understood 
what a sacrifice of previous sentiment it involved. . . . 
For my own feelings, the books of the Gospels had a 
sacredness which Old Testament books had not; and 
it was painful to me to lay aside those feelings of rev- 
erence which had hitherto deterred me from too minute 
investigation. I felt as if I had been set to make a 
dissection of the body of my mother; and could not 
feel that the scientific value of the results I might obtain 
would repay me for the painful shock resulting from 
the very nature of the task." 

There can be no doubt that the feeling thus vividly 
described by Dr. Salmon has been that of many another 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 65 

reverent investigator in the field of biblical criticism. 
But the scholar would be less than loyal to himself, 
and unworthy a place among real truth-seekers, if in 
the spirit of unbiased investigation he should do less 
than to follow wherever truth should lead. 

It is, of course, well known that this has not always 
been the spirit of some who have engaged in critical 
biblical study. Some have entered this field with a 
destructive purpose only in view. The atheist, the 
infidel, and the agnostic have sought from their various 
standpoints, and in the role of critics, to destroy the 
Bible. Others have approached this study so far under 
the bias of preconceived notions as to unfit them for 
judicial processes. Still others have entered upon this 
work for the sole purpose of supporting their own the- 
ories. The spirit of none of these is truly scientific. 
But it is safe to say that after a century and a half of 
investigation, and in spite of all results contributed 
by hostile, prejudiced, and incompetent critics, there 
has been reached a consensus of reverent, scholarly, and 
Christian conclusions on many certainly, perhaps on 
most, of the vital questions of biblical criticism. With 
the essential features of this consensus the scholars 
of Germany, England, and America are in agreement. 
Of the three countries named, the scholarship of America 
has been more tardy in working to its findings than that 
of either of the other nations ; but the facts underlying the 
field of this critical work are such as to compel substantial 
unanimity in conclusions reached. The process will con- 
tinue, adding new results with possibly minor revisions here 
and there, but the verdict on main lines already reached 
by critical scholarship is not likely to be reversed. 



66 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

I pass now to some consideration of the necessity of 
the critical process as applied to the Bible. The need 
was absolute. It inhered both in the processes of 
modern thought and in the most urgent claims due 
to the Bible itself. The movement of biblical criticism 
was in any event inevitable. If it had been possible 
for the entire Christian Church to set itself in a mood 
of indifference and inaction toward the question, the 
movement would have gone on without the Church. 
The Bible, however divine, was at least a historic pro- 
duction. By so far it was subject to investigation. 
As a supreme book in the world's religions, it would 
as certainly as that the seas attract the rivers attract 
to itself the newly awakened spirit of critical inquiry. 
The most ultra traditionalist might just as sensibly 
quarrel with a sunrise as to quarrel with this tendency 
of thought. The movement was both inevitable and 
irresistible. 

But for another and very different reason than that 
it was inevitable as the expression of a new awakening 
of thought can the devout mind welcome and accept 
the movement of biblical criticism. It is a movement 
ordained of Providence. The processes of history had 
slowly prepared Christian thought to receive its true 
and larger heritage in the Bible as a supreme revelation 
of God to man. A fact which seems to have been little 
apprehended by many Christian apologists is that the 
Bible is abundantly able to take care of itself. In the 
entire history of discussion as centering in the Bible 
it has been invariable that the voice of any new prophet 
of progress, or the coming in of a new learning, has 
been greeted by whole schools with protest. Scholars 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 67 

in numbers have unconsciously urged their own views, 
traditional or otherwise, as synonymous with the values 
and integrity of the Bible itself. And on the approach 
of any new view these same scholars have sprung to 
the defense of their own notions as though they felt 
themselves the very saviours and champions of divine 
revelation. It is a good thing to be zealously affected 
in a good cause. I do not intend to depreciate the 
legitimate function and usefulness of the apologist. 
But I believe that there are some things in his world 
of which God himself is the guardian. The Bible is 
one of them. I believe that the Bible itself is immeas- 
urably larger and more divine than the best thought 
of its ablest human defenders. The Bible will survive 
when whole bodies of human views concerning it shall 
have perished. It will be vastly more luminous and 
serviceable to mankind when its full character and 
message shall finally be stripped of the intellectual 
rubbish which human interpreters have imposed upon 
it. The Bible lives because it is God's Book. He 
takes care of it. I fear that this fact of God's guardian- 
ship of the Bible has not always had its due place of 
honor in Christian thought. 

The following are significant facts. It may be said 
that prior to the rise of modern criticism the Bible, 
as we now have it, had passed two distinct eras in its 
history. The one was that which established its canon- 
icity; the other, that in which for many centuries it 
was under the keeping and interpretation of a centralized 
and authoritative Church. It is well-nigh impossible to 
overstate the values to the Christian world as related 
to the Bible of one or both of these periods. 



68 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

The placing of the books of the Old Testament in 
a canonical group, and the same service as afterward 
rendered to the books of the New Testament, thus 
finally making one Bible of the two Testaments, were 
no haphazard processes. The procedure in both cases 
was human, and, therefore, not infallible. With ref- 
erence to the— Old Testament, the Jews of Alexandria 
would have included all or most of the books of the 
Apocrypha in the canon. These books the Jews of 
Palestine rejected. The selection of the canon of the 
New Testament was a far more critical problem than 
that of the older Testament. This canon had to be 
sifted from a great volume of Christian writings. There 
were extant in the period of the making of this canon 
many Gospels and Epistles claiming apostolic authority. 
The process was, in its own way, as critical in its search 
for authentic writings as any which has taken place 
under the modern higher criticism. The test of any 
writing to be admitted to the Testament was its identity 
as of true apostolic authorship. There were many 
claims which it was difficult to decide. There was 
never absolute unanimity with reference to them all. 

But after a review of all the centuries it would seem 
that the human selections which resulted in the vol- 
umes of Old and New Testament Scriptures as we now 
have them were as fully decided by the Divine Spirit 
as were ever any decisions of men charged with the 
settlement of high questions. A fact of marvelous 
significance, a significance beyond mere human measure- 
ment, is that these various Scriptures, the product of 
many centuries and of most diverse authorship, and 
against severe challenge at every gateway of their 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 69 

passage, got themselves at last assembled in a book 
which, under the auspices and decision of men most 
spiritually enlightened, is stamped as containing God's 
most perfect revelation of himself to mankind. If 
there be than this a more signal evidence of the divine 
overruling in human thought, that is something of 
which I do not know. 

Nor are we less impressed with the divine guardian- 
ship of the Bible if we study the history of its preserva- 
tion through the mediaeval ages. Europe for centuries 
was disorganized, its cities had fallen into decay, bar- 
baric conditions prevailed widely throughout its terri- 
tories, culture was a lost art. The one power which 
made itself everywhere felt was the Church. The Church 
itself shared largely in the common downfall. Scholarship 
had pretty much departed from its ranks. Very few 
in its priesthood or in its cloisters could read the original 
languages in which the Bible was written. Its priests 
were generally ignorant, often brutal and immoral. The 
period was one of turbulence, of feuds, and of blood. 
But through all these dark centuries the Church safely 
guarded the Bible. Whatever else might perish, this 
Book was not permitted to perish. It was cherished 
as a divine thing, guarded as the most sacred treasure. 

The Church was not always a good expounder, its 
chief pastors were often grossly untrue to their high 
offices, but the best lessons which it taught were from 
the Bible, and from this Book it derived the sanction 
of that wonderful authority, on the whole a beneficent 
authority, which it wielded over those barbaric ages. 
The emphasis must be placed on the fact that through 
these long ages of anarchy, of confusion and ruin, the 



7 o MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Bible was preserved. The Church which accepted the 
Bible as its supreme law was the one government which 
did not perish. Surely, God was standing in that dark 
period "keeping watch above his own." 

There is another side to this ecclesiastical custody of 
the Bible. The same Church which saved the Scriptures 
arrogated to itself the sole right of their interpretation. 
The theory was practically that of an infallible Church 
interpreting an infallible Book. Modern thought rejects 
both assumptions of this theory. The official inter- 
pretation of the Bible which prevailed in the Church 
generally down to the age of the Reformation was one 
almost entirely inherited from the early Fathers — mostly 
the Postnicene Fathers — who were recognized leaders in 
Christian thought during the period extending from 
the third to the sixth centuries. For an understanding 
of the history of theological thought in these centuries 
the study of the Fathers is indispensable. But for 
the purpose of a true understanding of the Scriptures, 
as required by modern critical standards, this study 
yields largely unsatisfactory and disappointing results. 
Into the philosophy of the Scriptures as held by most 
of these ancient writers had entered large infusions 
of pagan thought. In their interpretations of the sacred 
books they dealt much in allegorical methods leading 
often to most fanciful conclusions. The Fathers were 
not scientific exegetes of the Divine Word. 

The names of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Atha- 
nasius, and Augustine are among the most prominent 
of these early writers. It may be said that the methods 
of biblical interpretation introduced or supported by 
these four persons were controlling in the Church for 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 71 

a thousand years. It will be of interest to cite samples 
of scriptural interpretation from each of these repre- 
sentative authorities. Clement regarded the Bible as a 
book of enigmas, and held that allegory is the one key 
to unlock its meaning. Speaking of the positions of 
the utensils in the tabernacle, he says: "The altar of 
incense placed in the Holy Place before the veil is a 
symbol of the earth in the middle of the universe. The 
lamp is an emblem of Christ, and its position on the 
south of the altar shows the motion of the seven planets, 
which performed their revolutions toward the south. 
The ark signifies the properties of the world of thought, 
and the twelve stones in the four rows are the signs 
of the zodiac in the four seasons." 

Origen was perhaps the foremost Christian scholar 
of his century — the third— and he must be ranked as 
of most influential authority. He was regarded by 
many as the greatest teacher of the Church after the 
apostolic age. John the Baptist speaking of Christ said, 
"The latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to un- 
loose." Origen says that John here confesses his inability 
and unfitness to explain the mystery of Christ's assum- 
ing a human body. He dwells upon the fact that the 
Baptist mentions but one shoe, while elsewhere two 
are named. One shoe, he says, signifies Christ taking 
human flesh, the other his descent into Hades. He 
mentions but one because at the time he was in doubt 
as to whether Christ was to enter Hades. This inter- 
pretation is absurdly fanciful. 

Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria in the early 
part of the fourth century. He had a varied but influ- 
ential career, and put the stamp of his own thought 



72 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

upon the theology of the Church. In Isa. 6. 3 occurs 
the expression, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." 
From this passage Athanasius proves the doctrine of 
the Trinity in Unity. The fact that the word "holy" 
is repeated three times refers to Father, Son, and Holy 
Ghost; and that the word "Lord" is spoken but once 
proves that the three persons of the Trinity are "one 
essence." 

Augustine was born A. D. 354. No one of all the 
Fathers wielded a wider or more abiding influence upon 
the Church than did he. His influence in theology 
may be likened to that of Ptolemy in astronomy. It 
has been a powerful force even to our own times. While 
believing in the literal account of the Garden of Eden, 
he conceded that the story might admit of more than 
one explanation. Thus: "No one denies that paradise 
may signify the life of the blessed* its four rivers, the 
four virtues; its trees, all useful knowledge; its fruit, 
the customs of the godly; its tree of life, wisdom herself, 
the mother of all good; and the tree of the knowledge 
of good and evil, the experience of a broken command- 
ment." Or; "Paradise is the Church: the four rivers 
are the four Gospels; the fruit trees are the saints, and 
the fruit their works; the tree of life is the Holy of Holies, 
Christ; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the 
will's free choice." His interpretation of the ark is 
equally interesting. The ark is a figure of the Church 
in the world which is rescued by the wood on which 
Christ hung. Its dimensions represent the human body 
in which he came, the length of the body being six 
times its breadth and ten times its depth or thickness. 
Therefore the ark was made three hundred cubits long, 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 73 

fifty broad, and thirty high. The door in its side cer- 
tainly signified the wound in the side of the Crucified 
One, for by this those who come to him enter. 

The instances here given of methods of interpretation 
by the Fathers are mere fragments, but they are typical 
and they serve to illustrate the general philosophy of 
Scripture interpretation which was accepted as fully 
authoritative in the mediaeval Church. These interpre- 
tations would seem to be largely grotesque rather than 
sober attempts to explain the Divine Word. But it 
is not too strong to assert that, after the sixth century 
to the period of the Reformation, the writings of the 
Fathers had more influence in shaping the thought of 
the Church than had all the direct utterances of Christ 
and the writers of the New Testament. 

Coming to the Reformation, to Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, 
and the goodly company of Reformers, it is evident 
that they all were under more or less bondage to the 
traditional methods of biblical interpretation. The 
service which they rendered in this field was to differen- 
tiate the Bible from the Church, and to emphasize its 
authority as above and distinct from that of popes or 
councils. Wycliffe said: "If there were a hundred 
popes, and if all friars were cardinals, one ought not 
to trust them in matters of faith except as they agree 
with Holy Scripture." Luther, though never himself on 
the plane of interpretation fully emancipated from 
mediaeval methods, said: "When God's Word is ex- 
pounded and glossed by the Fathers, it is as when one 
strains milk through a coal sack." Calvin brought 
prodigious ability to the study of theology, but his 
great defect as a biblical interpreter was that he came 



74 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

to all his work with preconceptions. He used his great 
ability to fit the Scriptures into the molds of ancient 
dogma. 

The Reformers rendered a priceless service by trans- 
lating the Scriptures into the vernaculars of the people. 
It was on this anvil that the structure of patristic tra- 
dition was hopelessly broken. But the giving of the 
Bible to the people, while a great step toward the 
delivering of the popular mind and conscience, was 
not all. The Bible itself needed emancipation, not only 
from the repressions of a corrupt Church, but as well 
from inadequate and vicious methods of interpretation. 
The Bible, while marvelously preserved in its form, 
has never, until quite recently, had free opportunity to 
speak simply for itself. Indeed, the conditions through 
which it could make itself clearly and fully understood 
have never really existed since the apostolic age. Protes- 
tantism, while a great revolt against the arrogant claims of 
the Papacy, and while emphasizing the priesthood of the 
people, nevertheless carried over into itself many views 
of the Bible which the fuller knowledge and revised 
thought of the present very fully reject. The Reformers 
got rid of an infallible Church, but they substituted in its 
place an infallible Bible as interpreted by the teachings of 
the early Church. And this position Protestantism as a 
whole, until within very recent times, has accentuated. 

The conditions have been long preparing, and in 
the order of Providence the time is fully ripe, for a 
larger and better philosophy of the Bible than either 
the Papacy or Protestantism, until at least very recently, 
has been prepared to yield. The new view does not 
center itself primarily upon either the idea of infal- 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 75 

libility or inerrancy. It does give due consideration 
to the properly human elements which enter into the 
structure of the Scriptures. It recognizes the fact that 
the Bible is a historic literature, and that by so much 
it is legitimately subject to investigation. It recognizes 
that however high the subjects of which it treats, and 
whatever of inspiration may inhere in its record, it 
bears as a whole and in every one of its books the impress 
of its human authors. It recognizes that each one of 
its books, as a rule, represents a historic background 
and a human environment which furnish the occasion 
for the very existence of the book itself. If any have 
ever supposed that the books of the Bible came ready- 
made from God's hands into the hands of men, the 
new philosophy does not give hospitality to that view. 
It does, however, assert the legitimacy of putting its 
searchlight on this book up to the last line and the 
last point where human thought and human hands 
have had any part in its making. The new view is 
not skeptical about the divinity of the book. It is not 
irreverent in its presence. It proceeds to its work 
with wide-open and reverent vision. It has gone far 
enough in this work to be convinced that many of the 
traditional views of inspiration, and of inerrancy of 
statement, have utterly broken down under investiga- 
tion. But it is not concerned over such breakdown, 
for it does not believe that these views were ever a 
part of the vital or organic structure of the book itself. 
We shall, I believe, take a sane view of the modern 
critical movement as related to the Bible only when 
we give it due place as a creation of Divine Providence. 
The critical process is just as certainly of divine purpose 



76 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

as was the selection and installation of the books them- 
selves, or the preservation of their text in its integrity 
through the long ages of intellectual chaos. The Christian 
world has now been sufficiently trained, and scientifically 
so, to let the Bible, in the light of its own completest 
history, simply be its own interpreter. And this is 
really all that modern biblical criticism means. It is 
just an effort so to strip the Bible of the burdens which 
ignorance and superstition have imposed upon it, so 
to relieve it from the attachments with which traditional 
fallacies and false fancies have surrounded it, that 
in the unclouded light of its own true character it 
may speak direct to the hearts and minds of men. And 
this is what God wants. 

Some might ask, If the modern critical study of the 
Bible is ordained of God, then why has the process 
been characterized by such conflict? Why have so 
many hostile and destructive minds been permitted to 
exploit themselves in this work? These questions should 
give no trouble. Truth has always won its way through 
conflict. It is thus always brought into clearer ex- 
pression, and its values into larger appreciation. The 
history of conflict shows that God often employs the 
enemies of truth to furnish material for his own workers. 

We may rest secure in the conclusion that if the 
Bible be of God, then to it no harm can finally come. 
It is just as secure as the sun in the heavens. Also, 
if the Bible be a divinely inspired revelation, it will 
adjustively and commandingly adapt itself to the grow- 
ing intelligence and needs of mankind. When as a 
boy I first knew Manhattan Island it had the same 
topography as now. It was separated from the Jersey 



SOME CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY 77 

and Long Island shores as now by the Hudson and 
East Rivers. The only means of passage to these 
shores was by the lumbering ferryboat, which often 
had to feel its way from shore to shore through a dense 
fog. Conditions have greatly changed since then. Many 
hundreds of thousands of people have come thronging 
to the city. Great new needs have arisen. The old 
ferryboat is superseded. The East River is spanned 
by a series of great bridges, veritable wonders of engineer- 
ing, over which thunders the ceaseless traffic of human 
life. The rivers are undergirded by great tunnels through 
which is the constant rush of human-laden and electric- 
sped trains. And yet to-day Manhattan and Long 
Island are just where they were a thousand years ago. 
They have simply responded to the marvelous needs 
of a new age. 

All this may be a parable of what modern criticism 
means in reference to the Bible. It is simply putting 
the light of a new age, of new knowledge, of new intel- 
lectual needs, of new and imperative demands of the 
soul upon the book. Changes in the vision of the situa- 
tion are doubtless sure to come, have already come. 
But when the process shall be complete the Bible, without 
the removal of a single jot or tittle from its real integrity, 
will be exactly what it was a thousand years ago. The 
only difference will be that its approaches will be by 
luminous pathways of knowledge, and, as the great city, 
it will be glorious by day and beautiful by night. 



PERSONAL TO THE READER 



79 



When we obey the modern voice it is not because of the supremacy 
of our individual brain, but because of the working of ten thousand 
brains, whose researches have accumulated facts that compel our 
assent. We offer not our personal dictum, but that of the humanity 
which is ever growing and ever learning; which works with what Emer- 
son calls "the irresistible maturing of the human mind." — Jonathan 
Brierley. 



80 



CHAPTER VI 
PERSONAL TO THE READER 

Before entering upon the next three chapters, in 
which I shall undertake to discuss directly some of 
the phases of biblical criticism, I desire to make myself 
fully understood. In matters of fundamental criticism 
I make no claim as an original investigator. I can 
only assume to have used reverently and honestly my 
own intelligence and judgment upon such products of 
critical thought as have commanded my interest and 
study. In stating conclusions of a critical character I 
shall act far more in the capacity of a reporter than 
as an original investigator. It has so happened that 
for many years my professional life has been directed 
in channels of activity which would not be generally 
thought most favorable to the cultivation of scholarly 
habits. I gratefully say, however, that while I have 
always been a conscientious worker in my allotted 
sphere of duty, I have never been so busy as to have 
lost interest in, or to have failed to give myself to enam- 
ored pursuit of, the living and commanding questions 
of thought. While my daily work, always engrossing, 
has been to me a joy, I have always been prompted 
by my tastes to feel that there are few pleasures more 
satisfying, or pursuits more enviable, than those which 
fall to the privilege of the scholar. 

The questions of biblical study especially have for 
many years had for me a most serious and fascinating 
interest. From such study of these questions as I 

81 



82 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

have been able to give there have come to me many 
impressions, some of which have entered decisively into 
my convictions. But my studies in biblical criticism 
have been simply such as any intelligent layman might 
pursue for himself, if interested in this field of investi- 
gation. It is simply as a lay student, greatly interested, 
but claiming no rank as a critical authority, that I 
venture, in the immediately following chapters, to voice 
the opinions of some scholars whose conclusions have 
appealed to me as in many respects both convincing 
and helpful. I would not, however, wish to be con- 
strued as indorsing in detail all opinions, which have 
appealed to my interest. 

In making these statements I would like to guard 
against any impression of having surrendered my own 
right of judgment. It is not only the highest right, 
but, in the last resort, the highest duty, for one to fol- 
low his own convictions. I have, however, no hesita- 
tion in stating the reasons which have decided my 
conclusions. I have great respect for the judgment of 
expert authority. If a member of my family is ill, 
I consult the best medical skill within reach. If I have 
to deal with a practical question whose answer requires 
an expert knowledge of the law, I consult a trained 
lawyer. If I wish to cross the oceans, I not only select 
a stanch and comfortable ship, but I want also to feel 
that this ship is commanded by a cool-headed captain, 
a master in the art of navigation. Then, if a tempest 
arises, I am full of composure, for I feel that on the 
bridge is a man who is competent to manage his vessel 
in the storm. There are innumerable situations in life 
in which we trust to the judgment of others rather 



PERSONAL TO THE READER 83 

than to our own, and simply because for the given 
exigency we recognize that they have expert knowledge 
which we have not. 

And so, on general principles, in a given department 
of learning, the expert specialist, due allowance always 
being made for possible personal bias, is entitled to 
large consideration. His opinions concerning questions 
relating to his own department are likely to be more 
intelligent, more informing, more in conformity with 
the facts of the case, than can be secured from any 
other source. And his opinions will be all the more 
valuable if he is recognized as having exceptional train- 
ing for his work, as having expert ability for handling 
the particular questions with which he has to deal, 
and especially if his findings are corroborated by other 
specialists in all parts of the world. 

And this is precisely the principle on which, as I 
believe, the general consensus of devout and special 
scholarship on questions of biblical criticism is entitled 
to high consideration. Biblical criticism has to-day 
reached the rank of a science. It is no sporadic move- 
ment. It is not the creation of a few speculative intel- 
lectual adventurers. It is not in the hands of men of 
irreverent and destructive purposes. It represents in 
large measure the most expert, competent, painstaking, 
and conscientious scholarship of the age. And this 
scholarship, moreover, as represented ~ 
near centers of learning, stands in remarkable _ o _ 
ment in many great conclusions reached in this field 
of investigation. 

For instance, the "documentary theory" of the Old 
Testament is well-nigh universally accepted by recog- 



84 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

nized authorities in Old Testament literature. This 
theory, elsewhere discussed, asserts that the Old Testa- 
ment in the literary form in which we now have it is 
originally compiled from at least four different preexisting 
sources, and that by distinct individuals, or schools, 
and through different ages, these sources have been 
combined, edited, and finally brought together in the 
form and order in which we now have the books. Old 
Testament scholarship is so generally agreed upon 
this hypothesis as to make it safe to say that within 
the last two decades there has not been produced a 
single accredited Bible dictionary, commentary, or text- 
book — works already very generally in the hands of 
studious ministers and Sunday school teachers — which 
does not either defend or assume its truth. The theory, 
if carefully studied in its bearings, must, it would seem, 
commend itself to any thoughtful mind as not only 
elucidating many of the narratives, but as the key which 
explains the very evident duplicate form of much of 
Old Testament literature. Dr. George H. Gilbert, in 
his recent work on Interpretation of the Bible, says: 
''The critical method, though spoken against and forcibly 
opposed, has been accepted by the author of nearly 
every marked contribution to biblical interpretation dur- 
ing the past three decades in all Protestant lands/' 
To say nothing of Germany and other continental 
countries, it will hardly admit of challenge that the 
critical method is that under which all the chairs of 
Hebrew in the great universities, evangelical and other, 
of England and America are doing their work. It is 
due to say that the composite character of the Synop- 
tical Gospels of the New Testament is just as certainly 



PERSONAL TO THE READER 85 

proven and as universally accepted in the world of 
biblical scholarship as is the documentary theory for 
the Old Testament. 

There is altogether too much coincidence and sig- 
nificance in this unanimity to admit of its being passed 
by in silence or thoughtlessly set aside. The critical 
movement in biblical study, if it should measure nothing 
more, is of sufficient volume and is supported by so 
great weight of scholarship as at least to entitle it to 
most respectful study as an intellectual phenomenon of 
the age. 

It is important not to mistake the true function of 
" higher criticism." Much in popular thought is loosely 
attributed to this method which does not belong to 
it at all. President King has thus denned its scope: 
"Positively, higher criticism may be defined as a care- 
ful historical and literary study of a book to determine 
its unity, age, authorship, literary form, and reliability. 
In the determination of these problems, account is 
taken of the historical references contained in the book, 
of the style of the book, of the opinions expressed in 
it, of the citations made in it, and of the testimony 
(or lack of testimony) to this book found in other books 
of acknowledged authority, where some reference might 
be expected. The higher criticism of the book is thus, 
in the main, simply a painstaking study of the book 
itself to get at the facts about it." 

This process is certainly legitimate. It is a method 
applied to the Bible just as a scientific method might 
be applied to nature, for the purpose simply and only 
of ascertaining not what somebody thinks the Bible 
ought to say, but exactly what it does say. Reduced 



86 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

to a last definition, the one and only function of higher 
criticism proper is to give to the Bible the most unob- 
structed opportunity, without gloss or comment, to 
reveal to the reader its own truth, to tell its own di- 
vine story. 

Higher criticism in its real mission works no such 
havoc with truth as many have fearfully imagined. 
Canon Driver, regius professor of Hebrew in Oxford 
University, in his Introduction to the Old Testament, 
speaking of effects of the critical process upon the in- 
tegrity of the Old Testament, says: "It is not the case 
that critical conclusions, such as those expressed in 
the present volume, are in conflict either with the Christian 
creeds or with the articles of Christian faith. Those 
conclusions affect not the fact of revelation, but only 
its form. They help to determine the stages through 
which it passed, the different phases which it assumed, 
and the process by which the record of it was built up. 
They do not touch either the authority or the inspira- 
tion of the Scriptures of the Old Testament. They 
imply no change in respect to the divine attributes 
revealed in the Old Testament; no change in the lessons 
of human duty to be derived from it; no change as to 
the general position (apart from the interpretation of 
particular passages) that the Old Testament points 
forward prophetically to Christ. That both the religion 
of Israel itself, and the record of its history embodied 
in the Old Testament, are the work of men whose hearts 
have been touched and minds illuminated, in different 
degrees, by the Spirit of God, is manifest ; but the recog- 
nition of this truth does not decide the question of 
the author by whom, or the date at which, particular 



PERSONAL TO THE READER 87 

parts of the Old Testament were committed to writing; 
nor does it determine the precise literary character 
of a given narrative or book." 

Professor Briggs, certainly a high authority, says: 
"Higher criticism has not contravened any decision of 
any Christian council, or any creed of any Church, or 
any statement of Scripture itself." 

The advent of higher criticism and its activity in 
the field of the Bible were, as has already been empha- 
sized, inevitable. The spirit of literary criticism once 
enthroned in the seats of scholarship, it were puerile 
to assume that the greatest and most phenomenal 
book in human possession would not at once present 
itself as a most inviting and fruitful field of investigation. 
On this subject Principal Fairbairn, one of the most 
luminous and helpful of modern Christian writers, says: 
"If scientific scholarship be legitimate, the higher criti- 
cism cannot be forbidden — the two have simply moved 
pari passu. Hebrew language became another thing in 
the hands of Gesenius from what it had been in the 
hands of Parkhurst; the genius of Ewald made it a 
still more living and mobile and significant thing. The 
discoveries in Egypt and Mesopotamia have made 
forgotten empires and lost literatures rise out of their 
graves to elucidate Hebrew history and literature. A 
more intimate knowledge of Oriental man and nature, 
due to personal acquaintance with them, has qualified 
scholars the better to read and understand the Semitic 
minds. A more accurate knowledge of ancient ver- 
sions, combined with a more scientific archaeology, and 
a clearer insight into the intellectual tendencies and 
religious methods of the old world, especially in their 



88 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

relation to literary activity and composition, has enabled 
the student to apply new and more certain canons to 
all that concerns the formation of books and texts. 
The growth of skilled interpretation, exercised and 
illustrated in many fields, has accustomed men to the 
study of literature and history together, showing how 
the literature lived through the people and the people 
were affected by the literature; and so has trained men 
to read with larger eyes the books and peoples of the 
past. With so many new elements entering into sacred 
scholarship, it is impossible that traditional views and 
traditional canons should remain unaffected. If ever 
anything was inevitable through the progress of science, 
it was the birth of the higher criticism/ ' 

In this personal chapter I am frank to say that my 
own interest and conviction have been largely enlisted 
in this field because of the great and, as it seems to 
me, irresistible mass of facts and phenomena of the 
kind which I have above stated, because of its supreme 
importance to the Christian Church, and because I 
think I see in this advance in modern biblical study 
a movement through which most luminously God is 
giving to the world more clearly and fully than ever 
before the direct revelation of himself. 



HEBREW HISTORY 



8 9 



The subject of the first chapter of Genesis is not Creation, but the 
Creator. What it gives us is not a world, but a God. — Professor 
W. G. Elmslie. 

It is impossible to doubt that the main conclusions of critics with 
reference to the authorship of the books of the Old Testament rest 
upon reasonings the cogency of which cannot be denied without 
denying the ordinary principles by which history is judged and evidence 
estimated. Nor can it be doubted that the same conclusions, upon 
any neutral field of investigation, would have been accepted without 
hesitation by all conversant with the subject: they are opposed in 
the present instance by some theologians, only because they are 
supposed to conflict with the requirements of the Christian faith. 
But the history of astronomy, geology, and, more recently, of biology, 
supplies a warning that the conclusions which satisfy the common 
unbiased and unsophisticated reason of mankind prevail in the end. 
The price at which alone the traditional view can be maintained 
is too high. Were the difficulties which beset it isolated or occasional 
the case, it is true, would be different: it could then, for instance, be 
reasonably argued that a fuller knowledge of the times might afford 
the clue that would solve them. But the phenomena which the 
traditional view fails to explain are too numerous for such a solution 
to be admissible; they recur so systematically that some cause or causes, 
for which that view makes no allowance, must be postulated to account 
for them. The hypothesis of glosses and marginal additions is a 
superficial remedy: the fundamental distinctions upon which the 
main conclusions of critics depend remain untouched. — Professor 
S. R. Driver. 



90 



CHAPTER VII 
HEBREW HISTORY 

Hebrew history, always important as a subject of 
investigation, has come in the present day to be a study 
of engrossing interest in all centers of Christian learning. 
Until very recently the Hebrew writings of the Old 
Testament were assumed to belong to the oldest his- 
toric records, and to record the history of the most 
ancient families of the human race. Indeed, from time 
immemorial, these have been the oldest historic records 
accessible. It has been generally and most naturally 
believed that the Hebrew people, dating from the days 
of Abraham, rank chronologically, if not the very first, 
yet among the oldest of the nations of mankind. It 
has been assumed that from the days of. Adam, through 
an unbroken succession which finally linked itself with 
the Hebrew theocracy, there was passed down from 
the sources of original revelation a monotheistic faith 
of which the Hebrew nation was the special and chosen 
inheritor. 

Now it has come to be that nearly all this view has 
been radically revised. Archaeology has resurrected the 
histories of the nations of Mesopotamia and of Egypt, 
giving us as accurate and detailed a knowledge of their 
ancient peoples as the Old Testament gives us of the 
Israelites. In the light of these records we learn that 
the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman nations are 
comparatively modern among the ancient civilizations. 
Babylonian history can be definitely traced to a past 

91 



92 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

that antedates Moses by a period as great as that which 
separates Moses from our own times. So far as we 
are able definitely to decide, the national life of Israel 
began in Palestine certainly not earlier than 1400 B. C, 
probably later. But archaeology gives indubitable proof 
of the fact that there were civilized empires in exist- 
ence more than six thousand years ago, and these civili- 
zations were preceded by long prehistoric periods. The 
discovery of the code of Hammurabi demonstrates that 
in Babylon as early as 2250 B. C. there existed a civiliza- 
tion characterized by highly ethical ideals and customs. 
Professor Kent characterizes this code as follows: "In 
its high sense of justice; in its regard for the rights of 
property and of individuals j in its attitude toward 
women, even though it comes from the ancient East; 
and above all in its protection of widows and orphans, 
this code marks almost as high a stage in the revelation 
of what is right as the primitive Old Testament laws, 
with which it has points of highest resemblance." This 
code certainly, whether or not the thought which gave 
it birth contributed in any measure to the civil and 
ethical ideas which afterward entered so fully into the 
life of Israel, represents a civilization that was old and 
powerful when as yet history gives no trace of even 
the beginnings of the Hebrew nation. 

As for the doctrine of an original revelation given 
by God to the first parents of the race, and which was 
passed in a direct and guarded line to the special keep- 
ing of the Jewish people, this is a view to which critical 
history gives no support. The evidence, on the other 
hand, is that the Jewish people themselves sprang 
from a polytheistic ancestry. It is true that as far 



HEBREW HISTORY 93 

as we may go back along historic lines the peoples who 
preceded and surrounded the Israelitish life were re- 
ligious. The religions of these various peoples were not 
all of a common type, but they were all polytheistic. 
Renan is only one of many historians who have char- 
acterized the Semitic races as having a special gift for 
religion. Whatever truth there may be in this, the 
Jews as a Semitic race were the natural heirs to this 
gift. It is also true that the older nations by which 
Israel was surrounded, Babylon and Egypt, and of 
whose religious and social customs Israel must have 
had large knowledge, were the possessors of the most 
advanced religious faiths known to the ancient world. 

The religious history, however, of the Jewish people, 
so far as we are able to trace it, gives evidence of a 
development from primitive and idolatrous beginnings 
in an ascent more or less constant until at last it gives 
expression to the sublime monotheism of Isaiah. The 
distinctive fact, and the one of greatest possible sig- 
nificance, is that, however it emerged, Israel, from a 
very early date, and in the midst of hostile worships, 
did come into possession of a high monotheistic faith. 
There were long periods in this history, as is evidenced 
over and over again, when this faith did not seem to 
have a commanding hold upon multitudes of the Jewish 
people. According to their own records, they were 
scourged time and again on account of their tendency 
to lapse into idolatry. Indeed, these lapses are evi- 
dences in themselves of the traditional affinities of this 
people. The idolatrous tendencies of Israel were never 
finally purged away until the nation underwent the 
bitter chastisement of the Babylonian captivity. We 



94 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

shall, however, look in vain to any other nation for 
so lofty a faith as that which was finally developed 
in Judea. Babylon and Egypt were each vastly more 
learned, more scientific, more politically powerful, than 
the Hebrew nation. But this nation developed a great 
priesthood whose services were devoted to conducting 
and promoting among the people the worship of the 
Most High God. Under this worship there was created 
a ritual the most elaborate, the most impressive and 
awe-inspiring of any which had ever been used in human 
worship. In connection with this great faith there 
arose a succession of prophets, men of heroic mold, 
teachers whose calls to righteous living were like God's 
clarion to the conscience of the nation, a succession 
of men whose inspired messages so searched man's 
sense of duty as to give them a secure rank in all sub- 
sequent ages as the greatest moral leaders of mankind. 
Under this faith there also arose a litany of inspired 
song, the most transcendent ever used in worship. Wor- 
ship in its highest reaches of confidence and joy has 
always uttered itself in a rhapsody of song. The litera- 
ture of the Church is rich in hymns which could have 
been born only from the highest moods of gifted and 
devout singers; but for songs that voice the divine 
glory, goodness, and mercy — songs that reflect every 
mood of the worshipful soul, and which strike true to 
universal human experience — the ancient psaltery of 
Israel has never been surpassed and will never be super- 
seded. In a sense and measure realized by no other 
minds of the ancient world, it would seem indeed that 
the Hebrew priest, prophet, and singer were messengers 
of divinest truth to men. 



HEBREW HISTORY 95 

How did the Hebrew nation come into possession 
of its distinctive and exalted faith? In the last anal- 
ysis, there can be but one answer to this question. It 
was the Spirit of God moving in upon Hebrew thought. 
This, however, is not to define the method of the divine 
procedure. It is quite conceivable, and altogether prob- 
ably the fact, that God wrought his great inspirations 
of truth into Hebrew thought by methods so apparently 
natural as not easily to be distinguished from man's 
own mental processes. Indeed, they were man's own 
processes, only under the awakening of special illumina- 
tion. Whatever the method of illumination, the growth 
of intelligent faith under its influence, as the whole 
history illustrates, was a gradual, much of the time 
a very slow, development. There is a vast difference 
between the best faith of Moses and that of Isaiah. 
At first Jehovah dwelt at Sinai. Later his dwelling 
place was Jerusalem, which became the city of the 
Great King. It was a long time before God seemed 
to be spoken of as other than the God of Israel, the 
God of the Jewish people. But in times of the later 
prophets the conception of God had vastly grown. He 
was the God of all nations, the righteous Ruler of the 
entire world. 

My belief is that God's processes in revelation are 
much as his processes in nature, vital and, for the most 
part, not attended with spectacular phenomena. I be- 
lieve that God's usual method of revelation is through 
natural psychic processes. Upon this point, however, I 
do not care overmuch to philosophize. I believe that 
the revelation is a divine process, whether it is manifest 
in the lightning flash of Sinai, or comes on the hush 



96 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

of night as a still small voice. There was a time, a 
period somewhere, at which some prophetic mind clearly- 
conceived of God as a being exalted and distinct above 
all the gods of surrounding idolatries. The idea of 
Jewish monotheism, on a less or larger scale, in a crude 
or more perfect form, must have had a distinct genesis. 
The story of Abraham being divinely called to migrate 
from a far land to Canaan, that there he might found 
the dynasty of a new faith, is sublimely beautiful. What- 
ever may be concluded concerning the historic personality 
of Abraham, the story itself stands for a great truth. 
The name Abraham is sublimely historic, it stands 
at the head of a great moral epoch, the beginning of 
a new monotheism in the world. 

The luminous and supreme doctrine of Christian 
theism of to-day, a doctrine which like a mighty river 
bears upon its bosom the entire structure of Christian 
truth, can be traced for its origin far beyond Moses 
to prehistoric times. It cannot be doubted that the 
beginnings of this faith arose in minds of special dis- 
cernment. The presence of God, the God who is in 
all his world, manifested itself as a revelation to these 
souls in their moments of highest insight and illumina- 
tion. And this is a rational view of revelation. It is 
a view in harmony with the sanest philosophy of thought. 
It does not mean that revelation in its beginnings arose 
on the human mind full-orbed like the morning sun. 
It does not mean that divine truth was delivered to 
human thought in amplified and completed statement. 
It does not the less mean that to exceptional and devout 
minds in moments of highest insight the self-revealing 
God became manifest. This manifestation was a rev- 



HEBREW HISTORY 97 

elation, the unfolding, to these minds of a truth which 
thereafter was to take a distinctive and ever-enlarging 
place in the world's thought and conviction. This 
truth, in its first apprehension, in comparison to the 
fullness of its significance, could have been no more 
than the faintest dawn which heralds the coming day. 
It was a truth the very history of which evidences a 
slow development from small beginnings. Multitudes of 
the people, certainly in the earlier centuries of Israelitish 
life, seemed to have for this truth only slight apprecia- 
tion; for, as we have seen, they were constantly lapsing 
from its high demands. But this fact, upon the other 
hand, serves to illustrate the force with which the mono- 
theistic faith held the controlling minds of Israel; for, 
though pressed upon every side by the habits and thought 
of traditional idolatry, this faith never lost its place 
in the convictions of the prophetic and priestly leaders 
of the people. 

A standing obstacle in the way of a rational treat- 
ment of the beginnings of Hebrew history is that the 
traditional view has given almost no place in that history 
for the play of mythological and legendary factors. 
The roots of all ancient civilization are found to strike 
deeply into mythological soil. Investigation has confirmed 
this truth as applied to the civilizations of the far East, 
and we know that the histories of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, 
Greece, and Rome emerge from backgrounds of myth and 
are conveyed through legendary channels. From the 
standpoint of natural development there seems no reason 
why Israelitish history should be an exception to this 
general law. And, indeed, it is not an exception. It 
has only been falsely treated as such. It is now indubi- 



98 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

tably proven that many of the stories which appear in 
the earlier records of the Old Testament were simply 
taken over and adapted from older mythical or 
legendary sources, and that they are not to be taken 
at face value as sober and measured history. 

In the common thought Genesis has been received 
as the oldest Hebrew literature. It has been assumed 
that Moses was its author, and that it is so inspired 
as to admit of no statements not historically and lit- 
erally true. If these assumptions were correct, then, 
indeed, they would rightly exclude all mythical state- 
ments from the Genesis record. But, in the sense in 
which these assumptions were held, they are denied, 
and universally so, by modern critical thought. In the 
first place, Genesis in its compilation and present form 
is one of the most recent books of the Old Testament. 
While it deals with much that pertains to the Mosaic 
era, and may in part present matter of which possibly 
Moses was the recorder, yet the book was not, and 
could not have been, written by the hand of Moses. 
That the book is inspired, and thus divinely used, is 
not to be denied. But that it is inspired in such sense 
as to put the stamp of divine veracity upon all that 
it narrates, is an assumption which need not be urged. 

Genesis is divided into an order of sequence which 
would be very naturally assumed by an ancient writer 
who would undertake to record a history of the world's 
first things. It begins with an account of creation, 
including man. Its first period, a period indeed suffi- 
ciently abounding in fable, ends at the flood. The ante- 
diluvian race waxed wicked upon the earth, so much 
so that it repented God that he had made man. But 



HEBREW HISTORY 99 

one righteous man remains, Noah. To him God com- 
mitted the building of an ark, and the gathering into 
it in pairs samples of all the animal world, and finally 
his own family, preparatory to a universal flood by 
which God would destroy a wicked race. It was thus 
that God miraculously preserves only a single family, 
which, starting the race anew, should be the progenitors 
of prophetic peoples yet to come. Later, diverse lan- 
guages prevailed in the human race. The philosophy 
is explained in the story of Babel, an enterprise which 
God rebuked by confounding the common language and 
scattering the tribes. The next great epoch embraces 
the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their pos- 
terity, the covenant characters from whom finally was 
to spring the Israelitish nation. 

Now, this is a program of providential order such as 
would naturally appeal to a late but unscientific Jewish 
writer who might seek to record from their beginnings 
the historic steps which preceded the establishment of 
the Hebrew nation. This diagram is spectacular with 
the movement of forces which could only be directed 
by Almighty power. The creation, the deluge, the dis- 
persion of tongues, the call of Abraham, and the guidance 
of patriarchal history were indeed acts worthy of the 
great God of the Hebrews. But the God who directs 
these marvelous events is not a God limited to the 
conception of Moses. He is God as seen in the vision 
of the later prophets. But, critically viewed, all of 
these events are clothed more in a traditional than in 
a historic drapery. The form in which these stories 
are cast is Hebrew, and they are religiously employed 
by the prophetic and priestly writers to illustrate the 



ioo MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

creative cast and the providential guidance in human 
events of Jehovah, the God of Israel. But most of 
these stories themselves did not originate in the Hebrew 
thought. The narratives of creation, of paradise, and 
of the flood are all, in their main substance, borrowed 
from the older traditions of Babylon. Whatever may 
have been-4he- -process of absorption, however possibly 
unconscious to the men who gave final shape to the 
book of Genesis, the evidence is irresistible that the 
Hebrews adopted these Babylonian traditions, and, 
purging them of their polytheistic features, made them 
subsidiary to their monotheistic faith. That under this 
transformation they are made to serve high religious 
uses is doubtless true; but to associate with these nar- 
ratives a kind of inspiration compatible only with their 
historic genuineness is inadmissible. 

The attributed longevity of the antediluvians is a 
narrative which has its parallels in the mythology of 
nearly all ancient peoples. Josephus, after having de- 
fended the great longevity of these ancients, says: 
"Let no one, upon comparing the lives of the ancients 
with our lives, and with the few years which we now 
live, think that what we have said of them is false. . . . 
Now I have for witness to what I have said, all those 
that have written Antiquities, both among the Greeks 
and the Barbarians." Then he proceeds to cite many 
authorities who relate that the ancients of their respec- 
tive races lived to the period of a thousand years. 

Reared in an atmosphere of reverential respect for 
all statements to be found in the Bible, and far from 
the bias of natural or inherited skepticism, I early began 
to experience difficulty with some of the narratives of 



HEBREW HISTORY 101 

the Old Testament. I found myself able to be recon- 
ciled with many statements only on the ground that 
these early ages were under the reign of miracle and 
of exceptional wonder-working power. As I came to 
have a wider knowledge of history the suggestion 
came to me with increasing and disturbing force 
that there seemed certainly to be much in the early 
Hebrew narratives quite akin with the prehistoric tra- 
ditions of other ancient peoples. I was not a critical 
student. I was not prepared to coordinate or to under- 
stand these apparent similarities in the traditions of 
other people as related to Bible history. Personally, 
in these later years, I have been helped to great mental 
restfulness on all these questions by my readings in 
the field of scientific biblical study. I have been forced 
to modify many of my early notions about the Bible, 
but at no expense to its real values, which seem to 
me more precious and more luminous than ever before. 
I have learned to accept the fact that the Bible, as 
other great literatures, takes into itself the elements of 
social development, including tradition and fable, and, 
however it may be shot through with the sun-rays of 
inspiration, it is a book very human in its character, 
faithfully reflecting the thought-processes, early and late, 
of the races with which it deals. 

Keeping close company with this view must ever go 
the memory that in this record are to be clearly traced 
God's movements and relations with humanity. A rev- 
elation is enshrined in this history. Through divinely 
kindled souls God was gradually making himself known 
to that far-off, infantile world. It was not yet full 
morning. The most luminous minds did not possess 



102 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

noonday knowledge. There was no inspiration which 
was to stand in lieu of historic truth. It would be 
easy for the most gifted religious teacher to make wrong 
inferences as to matters of fact, and to use even tra- 
dition and fable as the basis of spiritual lessons. 

In judging these ancient Scriptures, then, we must 
not treat them unfairly. We must not expect them to 
meet modern standards of thought and knowledge. 
They were written in ages destitute of trained scientific 
minds. These were ages abounding in tradition and 
myth, but the passion and appliances for a critical 
examination of historic foundations were not yet de- 
veloped. These were ages when the great mysteries of 
life and of nature were pictorially conceived and ex- 
pressed in terms of poetry. And we may not forget 
that these Scriptures come to us under the impress, 
stamped through and through their very texture, of 
the Oriental mind and imagination. As Professor Kent 
has vividly put it: "The background of the Old Testa- 
ment is the ancient East — the age and land of wonder, 
mystery, and intuition, far removed from the logical, 
rushing world in which we live. The Old Testament 
contains a vast and complex literature, filled with the 
thoughts and figures, and cast in the quaint language 
of the Semitic past. Between us and that past there 
lie not merely long centuries, but the wide gulf that 
is fixed between the East and the West." 

When, then, we find the ancient writers of Genesis 
using current traditions and myths as the bases on 
which they superimposed the morals of the Hebrew 
faith we need not be surprised. It was not the function 
of inspiration to reveal to these writers the origin of 



HEBREW HISTORY 103 

creation. When they would give a philosophy of first 
things they simply laid hold upon the story of creation 
which had been passed down to them through the chan- 
nel of ancient tradition. This story they stripped of 
its polytheistic atmosphere and dress and made it the 
basis of the monotheistic creation. The same principle 
holds true of the stories of the longevity of the ante- 
diluvians, of the flood, and of much that enters into 
the patriarchal narratives. The writers of Genesis had 
no authentic knowledge of a flood. They simply took 
the tradition and made it the basis of a great homily 
on righteousness. They may have believed fully that 
they were stating history, but the significant thing is 
that they used the material in hand for the purpose 
of illustrating God's righteous anger against wicked- 
ness, and his providential care and protection for those 
who were obedient to his laws. And this is what we 
are to look for in these ancient writers — not history, 
not science, but a revelation of the righteous God through 
moral law. 

Viewed from this standpoint, the use of these pre- 
historic incidents is not only significant, but most natural 
and legitimate. Among all the intellectual possessions 
of the age, these were the most striking and wonderful. 
Than these there were no loftier headlands of imagina- 
tion with which the inspired thinker could associate 
the divine movements. And when we come to measure 
fairly the moral lessons illustrated in these narrations: 
the sublimity of the creative acts ascribed to God; the 
making of man in God's own image; the profound psy- 
chology of the story of the first transgression; the de- 
mands and penalties of righteous law, and the certainty 



104 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

of God's providential relations to the world as illustrated 
in the statement of the flood ; God's guidance and purpose 
in human history as shown in the patriarchal stories — 
looked at from this plane we can see that these early 
narratives not only had a vivid interest in themselves, 
but they were properly seized upon as a fitting back- 
ground from which to project upon the ancient world 
the best revelation then possible of the one true God. 
In this light these stories have a superlative value, 
and are of imperishable interest to mankind. 

I have not proposed to myself to attempt a critical 
discussion of the traditional, but nonhistorical, elements 
that enter into the Genesis narrative. Among these 
the story of the flood is prominent. The scientific survey 
of this story has been convincingly written by many 
scholars. I have thought that, in bringing this chapter 
to a close, I may render no better service than to quote 
quite in full Professor Driver's discussion of the flood 
story as given in his commentary on the book of Genesis: 

Has there been a Universal Deluge? Until comparatively recent 
times, the belief in a Deluge covering the whole world, and destroying 
all terrestrial animals and men except those preserved in the ark, 
was practically universal among Christians. Not only did this seem 
to be required by the words of the narrative (6. 17; 7. 4, 21-23), but 
the fossil remains of marine animals, found sometimes even on lofty 
mountains, and the existence of traditions of a Flood among nations 
living in many different parts of the world, were confidently appealed 
to as confirmatory of the fact. But the rise, within the last century, 
of a science of geology has shown that the occurrence of a universal 
Deluge, since the appearance of man upon the earth, is beyond the 
range of physical possibility; while the principles of comparative 
mythology show that the traditions of a Flood current in different 
parts of the world do not necessarily perpetuate the memory of a 
single historical event. (1) If "all the high hills under the whole 
heaven" (7. 19) were covered, there must, by the most elementary 
principles of hydrostatics, have been five miles depth of water over the 



HEBREW HISTORY 105 

entire globe : whence could this incredible amount of water have come, 
and whither, when the Flood abated, could it have disappeared? 
Even, indeed, though the expression in 7.19 were taken hyperbolically, 
or limited to the mountains known to the writer, the difficulty would 
not be materially diminished: it is clear from 8. 4, 5 that the writer 
pictured an immense depth of water upon the earth : and even if only 
Palestine, and the mountains (not the highest) in Armenia were sub- 
merged, it must have risen to at least 3,000 feet; and water standing 
3,000 feet above the sea in Palestine or Armenia implies 3,000 feet of 
water in every other part of the globe — an amount incredible in itself, 
besides involving, quite as fully as five miles of water would do, all 
the difficulties mentioned below. No doubt there was a time when 
hills and mountains were submerged, and when the remains of marine 
animals referred to above were deposited on what was then the bottom 
of the sea; but, as geology shows, that was in an age long anterior to 
the appearance of man upon the earth, and the period of submergence 
must have lasted, not for a single year, but for untold centuries. 
(2) Without the assumption of a stupendous miracle (for which there 
is not the smallest warrant in the words of the text), all species of 
living terrestrial animals (including many peculiar to distant con- 
tinents and islands, and others adapted only to subsist in the torrid 
or frigid zone, respectively) could not have been brought to Noah, 
or so far tamed as to have refrained from attacking each other, and 
to have submitted peaceably to Noah. (3) The number of living 
species of terrestrial animals is so great that it is physically impossible 
that room could have been found for them in the ark. (4) A universal 
Deluge is inconsistent with the geographical distribution of existing 
land animals: for different continents and islands have each many 
species of animals peculiar to themselves — South America, for example, 
has the sloth and the armadilla, Australia has marsupials, New Zealand 
strange wingless birds ; but if all land animals were destroyed at a date 
when these continents and islands were separated from one another 
substantially as they are now, how could the representatives of all 
these species have found their way back over many thousands of 
miles of land and sea to their present habitations? (5) If the entire 
human race, except Noah and his family, were destroyed at the same 
date, the widely different races, languages, and civilizations of Baby- 
lonia, Egypt, India, China, Australia, America — to say nothing of 
other countries — cannot be accounted for: for the races inhabiting 
these countries, if they ever lived together in a common home, could 
not have developed the differences which they exhibit, unless they had 
started migrating from it centuries, and indeed millennia, before either 
B. C. 2501 or B. C. 3066; moreover, in the case of at least Babylonia 
and Egypt, we possess monumental evidence that civilization in these 



io6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

countries existed continuously, without a break, from a period long 
anterior to either of these dates. 

Upon these grounds — to which others might be added — the suppo- 
sition that the Deluge of Noah was a universal one, is, it is evident, 
out of the question, and has indeed been generally abandoned. 

Even, however, the attempt which has been often made to regard 
the Deluge as a "partial" one is beset by difficulties. Certainly there 
would be no objection, upon scientific grounds, to the supposition that 
there was, about B. C. 2500, an extensive and destructive local inun- 
dation in the lower part of the plain of Babylonia ; but an inundation 
such as this does not satisfy the terms of the narrative of Genesis. The 
waters are described as rising at least as high as "mountains of Ararat" 
(8. 5), the lowest of which are more than 2,500 feet above the plain of 
Babylonia. (2) The narrative speaks repeatedly of every living thing 
which had been created, including in particular all mankind, as having 
been destroyed. But a flood confined to the plain of Babylonia would 
certainly not have destroyed all animals upon the earth : it is, moreover, 
certain — to say nothing of India, China, and other parts — that long 
before B. C. 2501 mankind had spread as far as Egypt, and had 
established an important civilization there, which obviously could 
not have been affected by a flood, however extensive, in Babylonia. 
It is manifest that a flood which would submerge Egypt as well as 
Babylonia must have risen to at least 2,000 feet (the height of the 
elevated country between them) , and have thus been in fact a universal 
one (which has been shown to be impossible) : a flood, on the other 
hand, which did less than this is not what the biblical writers describe, 
and would not have accomplished what is represented as having 
been the entire raison d'etre of the Flood, the destruction of all man- 
kind. We are forced, consequently, to the conclusion that the Flood, 
as described by the biblical writers, is unhistorical. 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 



107 



The great Old Testament scholars of the past half-century have 
most of them been critics, and they have performed a monumental 
work. . . . 

It has been now established as a fixed principle of hermeneutics 
that the Bible must be interpreted just as any other book is. Our 
inquiry, as we study it, must always be, not, What could this verse 
or passage be? but, What did it mean? or, What does it mean? From 
this principle there is no escape. The thinking world will tolerate 
none other. But this new attitude, valuable at it may be in itself, 
has still increased our difficulties. For it has shown that the sacred 
writers were enmeshed in the transient customs and thought of their 
own time to an extent that had not been realized before. . . . 

The great task of the interpreter of any ancient work is to deter- 
mine the conditions of life and thought under which it originated. 
This is in no case an easy task. But, if our critics are to be trusted, 
it is especially difficult in the case of the Old Testament. For its 
books are very few of them unities. In some instances several docu- 
ments of varying ages have been united together, and in others ex- 
tensive interpolations from a later date have been made, so that 
single chapters, yea, single verses, are divided up among different 
authors that lived centuries apart. The question, therefore, of the 
intelligibility of the Old Testament, particularly to the average 
reader, is a serious matter. . . . 

It is to modern scholarship that the lot has fallen of grappling with 
this problem of the intelligibility of the Old Testament in a seemingly 
final way. Its labors have been characterized by unrestrained free- 
dom and by an astonishing thoroughness. Its resources both in the 
form of method and of material seem almost unlimited. It would 
take volumes, indeed it has taken whole libraries, to record all that has 
been done in the field of textual criticism, of philology, and of archae- 
ology, simply for the purpose of making this ancient literature more 
intelligible to us. — Professor Albert C. Knudson. 



to8 



CHAPTER VIII 
OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 

The canon of the Old Testament, embracing the 
books as we now have them, was not completed till 
about the close of the first Christian century. It con- 
sists of what were originally known as three distinct 
selections of books — the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Writings. The first group composed the Pentateuch, 
and this was canonized some time, probably early, in 
the fourth century B. C. In the second group were 
included, in a first division, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, 
and Kings. In a second division were Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, and the Twelve Minor Prophets. The canoniza- 
tion of this group was gradual, the first four books 
being probably admitted about 300 B. C, while the 
entire list was not completed earlier than 200 B. C. The 
third group, consisting of the Old Testament books 
not above named, called the Writings, also spoken of 
as "the rest of the books,' ' found its way into the canon 
by slow admissions. Various parts of the Psalter, for 
instance, were received at different times, until finally 
the collection as we now have it was complete. 

The book of Daniel, as late written, was one of the 
last of the prophetical books to be received. The canon 
was closed by the admission of Ecclesiastes and the 
Song of Songs. While it is to be acknowledged that 
some of these books have a much higher religious value 
than others, yet the collection as a whole was made up, 
as both the process and the quality of results attest, 

109 



no MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

on a very lofty standard of selection, a standard sup- 
ported by the highest religious sense of the nation. 

There is evidence that the canon as now preserved 
was selected from a comparatively large Hebrew lit- 
erature, but it is of interest to note that nearly all of 
this literature outside of the Old Testament has perished. 
There is a mass of Jewish writings now extant in Greek, 
in which is included the Old Testament Apocrypha. 
Some of the apocryphal writings are of high religious 
value, and anciently, especially among the Alexandrian 
Jews, it was strongly felt that these should be admitted 
to the canon. It may also be said that this Alexandrian 
judgment is not without support from many competent 
modern scholars. 

In the canon of the Old Testament, as in a precious 
cabinet containing the crown jewels of a kingdom, we 
have preserved to us the records of God's revelation 
to the Hebrew people, and through this people to the 
entire world. A work, a very divine work, a work 
yielding results of inestimable value, to which God has 
been calling modern scholarship, is the task of dis- 
covering the real history and the chronological order of 
the writings of the Old Testament. It is only as these 
facts are ascertained that the writings themselves can, 
on critical examination, be made to yield a satisfactory 
account of themselves as literature, and, what is of 
far greater importance, render a consistent development 
of the processes of revelation itself. It has come to be 
an imperative, almost an axiomatic, demand of modern 
philosophy that all great movements of human thought 
and history shall come under a law of progressive develop- 
ment. It has long been widely and profoundly felt 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS in 

that the process of revelation, as conditioned by the 
mental growth of the race, can be no exception to this 
demand. 

But on the assumption, for instance, that one writer 
was the author of the five books of the Pentateuch, 
it is evident to the casual reader that as these writings 
now stand in the canon they yield no satisfactory evi- 
dence of either historic order or of progressive revelation. 
They present in brief compass, and not with freedom 
from confusion, many varieties of literary style, diverse 
conditions of civilization, and laws which for simul- 
taneous administration would certainly conflict with 
themselves. 

It is the conclusion of critical scholarship that the 
literature embraced in the Pentateuch is the product 
more nearly of a thousand years rather than the writings 
of a single author. It has long been noted that the 
historic books of the Old Testament often give different 
and varied narratives of the same events. Thus in 
Genesis, through the first chapter to the fourth verse 
of the second chapter, and then from the fourth verse 
to the end of chapter two, are two distinct accounts 
of creation. In the essential facts stated these two 
accounts agree; but to the critical reader their literary 
style is so diverse as to make it seem improbable that 
the two could have sprung from the same author. In 
form they seem also not to belong to the same age of 
literary composition. In the group of chapters (n. 10 
to 25. 20) giving the Abrahamic stories, there can be 
traced at least "nine examples of duplicate versions." 
Also in the later group of stories in which Joseph ap- 
pears as the chief figure there is evidence of at least 



ii2 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

nine other duplicate statements. Professor Driver, in 
his Introduction to Genesis, says: "The book of Genesis 
presents two groups of sections, distinguished from each 
other by differences of phraseology and style, and often 
also by accompanying differences of representation, so 
marked, so numerous, and so recurrent, that they can 
only be accounted for by the supposition that the groups 
in which they occur are not both the work of the same 
hand." It is to be noted that these distinct groups 
characterize in a very marked degree not only Genesis, 
but the entire first six books of the Old Testament. 

So true is this that if the group represented by the 
first citation (Gen. i. i to 2. 4) were separated from all 
other matter contained in the Hexateuch, this group 
by itself would be found to form a very nearly com- 
plete narrative, giving an account especially of the 
origins and institutions of the Hebrews. 

The evident presence of these diverse features in 
the literary body of the Old Testament as early as a 
century and a half ago led to the beginnings of what is 
now familiarly known as the "documentary hypothesis." 
This hypothesis assumes that the early Hebrew writings 
are based originally upon different preexisting docu- 
ments, which have gone through successive processes 
of collection and combination until finally, by later 
editors, they have been gathered into one narrative. 
The inference would also seem clear that in the develop- 
ment of the narratives the editors themselves felt free 
to give to the various documents such revision as in 
their judgment might be required for harmonizing the 
narratives as a whole. 

Dr. W. G. Jordan, professor of Hebrew and Old Testa- 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 113 

ment exegesis in Queen's University, Kingston, Canada, 
a recognized authority in this field, says: "The most 
important contribution that Old Testament criticism has 
given to the world is no doubt the 'documentary theory,' 
or, in other words, the theory that the Pentateuch is 
not the product of one writer or of one generation, but 
consists of four different documents, which had their 
origin in different ages and circumstances. This is now 
pretty generally regarded as one of the 'assured results' 
of scientific research." He further says: "It is now 
generally held that in the first five books of the Bible 
we have represented different kinds of literature, various 
stages of history, and diverse types of theology, proph- 
ecy, and law. Strange as it may seem at first, it be- 
comes clearer the more the matter is looked into that 
the first chapter of the Bible is, in its present form, 
one of the latest parts in this wonderful collection, 
and that in order to gain a scientific view of the growth 
and advancement of Hebrew religious thought and life 
the material must be arranged in a form quite different 
from that which we find in our ordinary Bible." 

I shall attempt now to present a brief and intelligent 
outline of the "documentary theory" in the acceptance 
of which there seems to be general agreement among 
recognized biblical scholars. The theory is built on 
the basis of four distinct documents, or groups of docu- 
ments, which furnish the original material from which 
the books of the Pentateuch, and, indeed, most of the 
historical books of the Old Testament, are constructed. 
These documents have so long had an interrelated 
history that the outlines lying between them cannot 
always in all features be distinctly traced. They have 



ii 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

been much edited, in parts often combined with each 
other, and finally they were editorially interwoven to 
make up the literary body of the Old Testament in 
its present form. The four main documents were not 
only respectively the products of different periods and 
of different schools of thought; but the documents 
themselves embodied traditions which far antedated the 
periods of their own composition. As fossil remains 
in the geographical strata, so in these are often found 
reminders of far-away traditions, the telltale repro- 
ductions of prehistoric life. Yet, whatever the fusion 
of these documents in minor relations, however great 
the difficulty here and there of assigning to its right 
group a given passage, the documents themselves in 
their individual distinctness are now seen to run, like 
parallel ranges, throughout the entire historical fields 
of Old Testament literature. 

The oldest of the documents in the order of pro- 
duction is that which specially contains the "Judean 
prophetic" narratives. These narratives were composed 
with special reference to Judah and the southern king- 
dom. They are called "prophetic" because written from 
the standpoint and with the aims of the early prophets. 
These narratives are sometimes called "Jehovistic," be- 
cause Jehovah is the name which they usually applied 
to the Deity in contradistinction to the term "Elohim" 
as employed in the priestly narratives. These nar- 
ratives, beginning with the account of creation, deal 
in the traditions leading up to Israelitish history, and 
with that history itself to a period as late as the death 
of David. Their purpose is to give a connected history, 
from earliest beginnings, of the covenant people of 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 115 

Jehovah. They seize hold of traditions from whatever 
source if they illustrate Israel's early history, or Jehovah's 
relations to his people. The style of these narratives 
is vivid, pictorial, often poetical. Their conception of 
God is highly anthropomorphic. They picture the Deity 
coming in familiar form and manner into frequent con- 
tact with men. Their measurement of sin is largely 
regulated by the personal loyalty or otherwise of man 
to God as his friend. Adam and Eve were sinners, not 
because it was wrong in itself to eat the forbidden fruit, 
but because they were personally disobedient to God's 
demand. Abraham was an ideal character, known as 
the "Friend of God," because he was responsive to 
Jehovah's will. These narratives lay very little stress 
upon forms and ceremonies, but emphasize religion as 
vitally expressing itself in an attitude of obedience as 
shown in just and loving acts. 

The many different stories embodied in these nar- 
ratives, some of them evidently reflecting "exceedingly 
primitive ideas and usages, while others in language 
and representation are related to the writings of a ma- 
turer age," indicate that their material was gathered 
from many different sources and representative of widely 
different periods. The probabilities are that the work 
of collecting these stories was not that of one man, 
but of a school of prophets. The narratives of the 
Judean document run through the books of Genesis, 
Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and 
represent more than one third the total contents of 
these books. The prophetic writing of the history 
contained in this document was probably begun about 
825 B. C. Its main body was completed at a period 



u6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

not much later than the eighth century. The contents 
of this document, however, were subject to the review, 
revision, and addition of late prophetic writers, and 
evidence appears that supplementary additions Were 
from time to time made to the original document down 
to a period as late as 650 B. C. For purposes of con- 
venient identification this document is designated in 
critical works as "J." 

The second document in the order of development is 
that which is sometimes termed the "Elohistic prophetic," 
so entitled because up to the record of the divine revela- 
tion to Moses it applies to Deity the name "Elohim." 
This document originated with the prophets of the north- 
ern kingdom, and as a chief designation of this kingdom 
was "Ephraim," the title "Ephraimite prophetic" is a 
very fitting one for its narratives. These narratives 
begin with the divine covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15). 
They run largely parallel with the Judaic stories, but 
lay much more emphasis upon the characters and inci- 
dents of the northern kingdom than is true of the Judean 
narratives. This document gives evidence of being some- 
what later in its composition than its Judean parallel. 
Its writers lay great stress upon the theocratic character 
of Israel, and emphasize the importance to the national 
life of the prophetic function. The prophet as the 
mouthpiece of God to the people is greatly more an 
important character than either secular ruler or priest. 
The purport largely of the writing is to impress the 
lesson that when the nation has listened to the voice 
of God's messenger, the prophet, prosperity and bless- 
ings have ensued, and that when this voice has been 
disregarded disaster has resulted. The anthropomorphic 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 117 

conception of Deity as set forth in the Judean is almost 
entirely absent from these Ephraimite narratives. Only 
to Moses does God show himself face to face. The 
prophet stands between God and the people as the 
bearer of the divine message. In the view of these 
northern writers, as apparently distinct from the southern 
standpoint, the ancestors of the Hebrews were idolaters. 
The most probable date to be assigned to the collection 
of these narratives is about the middle of the eighth 
century B. C. This document is critically designated 
as"E." 

The northern kingdom fell before the Assyrians in 
722 B. C. After this the southern school of prophets 
became the custodians of the northern records, and 
it is to this school that we must assign the editorial 
combination of the Judean and Ephraimite stories into 
one document. The combination of these two docu- 
ments into one narrative marks one of the most provi- 
dential events in the history of the Old Testament. 
We have thus preserved to us in their original form the 
oldest literary records of the Bible. It is this combina- 
tion which accounts largely for the many duplicate 
and variant narratives which characterize the historical 
books of the Old Testament. The editors probably 
took considerable liberty with the original statements 
as they found them, generally in events of greatest 
interest retaining both narratives, frequently retaining 
only the seemingly better statement of an event, and 
sometimes transferring a narrative to a position which 
would seem to them better suited to the real order of 
events. The indications are that the combination of 
the documents J and E was completed before the Baby- 



n8 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Ionian exile, and may most probably be assigned to a 
date somewhere in the latter half of the seventh cen- 
tury B. C. This combined document is critically desig- 
nated as "JE." 

At a still later period, probably prior to, possibly 
within, the age of the Babylonian exile, the members 
of a school, now designated as the "late prophets," 
devoted themselves to reformulating and readapting the 
laws of Israel to the then existing conditions of national 
life. The body of their work appears in the book of 
Deuteronomy. The authorship of this book has been 
traditionally attributed to Moses. It deals largely with 
the sayings which he is made to utter, as also with 
laws which are assumed to have proceeded from him. 
Even if many of these sayings and laws found a first 
utterance with Moses, yet, for reasons which in them- 
selves seem entirely convincing, it is clear, say our 
modern authorities, that he could not have been the 
author of this book. For reasons equally convincing^ 
it is evident that the book must be the product of a 
period or periods far later than that of Moses. But if 
Moses was not the author of Deuteronomy as we now 
have it, what are we to think of the character of its 
real author, who seems to speak as though he were 
uttering at first hand the very words of Moses? It 
should be first borne in mind that the book nowhere 
directly claims Moses as its author. A further fact is 
that the practice of attributing direct sayings to prom- 
inent characters is a very common usage among Old 
Testament, and indeed other ancient, writers. In the 
book of Chronicles, David and Solomon, for instance, 
are often made to express themselves through ideas 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 119 

and idioms which are of a distinctly later age than 
their own. The author of Deuteronomy, then, would 
be guilty of no violence against the accepted literary 
customs of his times in putting his own words into 
the mouth of Moses. Especially is this true when we 
remember that he was actuated by no thought of him- 
self as a mere inventor of the matter which he wrote. 
He doubtless was dealing with a body of utterances 
and laws already ancient. It was a body of sacred 
tradition which had come down from the highest sources. 
In the emergencies that were now upon the nation 
the counsels of its greatest lawgiver, and especially 
the highest moral statutes for the government of Israel, 
required reiteration in direct and intensified form, in 
a form adapted to meet the tendencies of the particular 
age to which this prophet-author — possibly school of 
authors — addressed himself. 

The nation had most ungratefully fallen away from 
God into corrupting idolatries. It was already suffering, 
and was perhaps to suffer further, the dreadful penalties 
of apostasy. It was a time for the sharpest arraignment 
of transgressors, and for prophetic summons of the 
nation to righteousness. The sinning people needed 
to be stirred to a sense of their sinfulness as under the 
lightning flashes and thunder-trumpets of Sinai. The 
God of Israel had been a covenant-keeping God. He 
had never failed in his regard for his covenant people. 
He had been Father, Friend, and Protector to them 
always. When the people were obedient to his com- 
mandments the nation had been strong, prosperous, 
and happy. It was only the departure of the nation 
from his righteous ways that had brought down upon 



120 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

itself the stroke and the scourge of disaster. The voice 
to Israel was: "What doth the Lord thy God require 
of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all 
his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy 
God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, to keep 
the commandments of the Lord, and his statutes." 

It was in the spirit of a recall to righteousness of a 
sinning and apostate nation that the book of Deuteronomy 
was written. And, though it voiced chiefly an old 
message, it came now clothed in the clearest spiritual 
thought, and with the loftiest moral appeals of any 
prophetic message which thus far in its national his- 
tory had come to Israel. And Deuteronomy, while it 
takes up into itself very much from preceding thought 
and suggestion, is distinct. It is the product of special 
conditions, of an age and a school which stand by them- 
selves. It represents, on the whole, the highest plane 
of prophetical inspiration yet reached by Israel's teachers. 
The influence of the law school of prophets from which 
this book sprang makes itself decisively felt in the Old 
Testament books which were produced contempora- 
neously or subsequent to its own appearance. The date 
of its origin is probably not far from the middle of the 
sixth century B. C. The document which bears the 
stamp of this school of prophetic authorship is desig- 
nated as "D." 

Of the four fundamental documents which underlie 
the historic books of the Old Testament, the last in 
the order of development is that which contains the 
priestly narratives. Until in comparatively recent times 
the narratives which are grouped under this document 
were supposed to represent the oldest records in Hebrew 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 121 

literature. The reversal of this view, however, is now 
universally accepted by the critical schools. The evi- 
dence is well-nigh conclusive that neither the authors 
of J, E, nor D know anything whatsoever of P. This, 
however, is but one of many features which prove that 
in the order of their development P is the latest of the 
documents. This document was composed evidently by 
an order of priests who wrote in the interests of main- 
taining a hierarchical construction of the Israelitish 
theocracy. Its style is without poetry. It is written 
in defense of institutions and rites. Its authors were 
lovers of law and ritual. They idealized the stories of 
the earlier Judean prophetic narratives, and the laws 
as designated in Deuteronomy, translating them in 
terms of ultra-priestly conception. Without the knowl- 
edge which would qualify them for the task of the crit- 
ical historian, they doubtless sincerely believed that the 
usages and laws which they so idealized had been in 
vogue since the foundations of their national history. 
Their class preferences and habits of mind were such 
as to lead them to magnify the priestly elements in the 
national religion. They exalted Moses into a character 
altogether in excess of what would be justified by the 
other records, making of him a very demigod. "With 
the exception of the Sabbath and circumcision, all of 
Israel's laws and institutions, from the earliest to the 
latest, are traced directly to him." The anthropomorphic 
views of God so current in the prophetic narratives 
are entirely absent from this document. God is empha- 
sized as a Spirit, omnipotent, not working through 
mediating processes, but both creating and governing 
at will by the fiat of his word. At Sinai are seen and 



i22 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

heard the lightning and the thunders of his power, but 
his personality is veiled in clouds and mystery. 

The writers of this document are doubtless of the 
influential priestly class belonging to the period of 
the Babylonian exile. Numerous features of the nar- 
ratives would indicate the contact of these writers 
with Babylonish thought. Many of the ceremonial 
types enjoined are such as are known to have been 
shared by the later Jews and the Babylonians. Its 
stories of creation and the flood show a decidedly Baby- 
lonish origin. The idealizing, under priestly preposses- 
sions, of the early history is a process that might be 
very natural to men who themselves were dwelling 
apart from the direct movements of the national life. 
The probabilities are that the narratives of this docu- 
ment were not all written in one close period. Like 
all other narratives which have been discussed, these 
would be gathered gradually, and would be subject 
from time to time to new additions and to editorial 
emendations. They were probably substantially com- 
pleted at some time during the latter half of the fifth 
century B. C. This document is designated as "P." 

There remains to be noted one other step in the final 
process of securing the early books of the Old Testa- 
ment in the form in which we now have them. This 
is the editorial work by which were united in a common 
product the narratives of the priestly document with 
the already combined prophetic narratives. This final 
work bears evidence of having been done by one or 
more of the priestly order. While it is evident that 
this editorial worker — or workers — was interested espe- 
cially to preserve the integrity of the priestly narratives, 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 123 

yet the service rendered was of the highest possible 
importance, for to it we are doubtless indebted for 
the preservation of the older traditions of Hebrew 
history. The canonization of the first five books of 
the Old Testament followed soon after this work, and 
not later than 200 B. C. the entire first eight books of 
the Old Testament were in the canon, and thus to the 
present time the integrity of their form has been sacredly 
and jealously guarded. 

Thus, in this chapter I have endeavored to reflect 
concisely and faithfully the story of the documentary 
theory of the Old Testament historical books as this 
theory is now held by the schools of biblical criticism. 
I am, of course, quite aware of the application of the 
critical process to all the books of the Old Testament. 
It would be interesting to traverse this process in its 
relations, for instance, to Isaiah and to Daniel. But 
while it seems indubitable that Isaiah cannot be the 
work of a single author, but the product of different 
authors and of distinct periods, and that Daniel is 
certainly one of the latest books of the Old Testament, 
I have not deemed it necessary for my present purpose 
to pursue a further delineation of this critical work; 
nor have I thought it of importance that I should make 
any detailed statement of points in which I might agree 
with, or dissent from, the critical positions as above 
set forth. 

A final and general word should perhaps be given 
concerning the documentary theory itself. The results 
which this theory presents require for the full appre- 
ciation of their value and significance a careful and 
judicial mental survey of the processes from which 



124 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

they have sprung. These processes have not been 
haphazard; they have not been developed impulsively, 
or by rapid hothouse methods, in accordance with 
the demands of any one school of critics. They repre- 
sent more than a century of sifting and painstaking 
work by many scholarly groups, and of widely sundered 
countries. There is not a single step in what are now 
accepted as "assured results" which has not been stoutly 
challenged. Every conclusion reached has been first 
tested as in furnace fires. All the ground has been 
traversed and retra versed by both friends and foes. 
Nothing has been accepted as settled until it has met 
the requirements of overwhelming tests. The history 
of this theory shows that many hypotheses have been 
proposed which in turn have had to be rejected. This 
is but a repetition in history of what has been true in 
the establishment of all great working laws. Kepler 
spent many years, years of enormous toil, in ascer- 
taining the laws of the planetary motions. In these 
years he tried many tentative hypotheses, most of 
which he had to abandon. But he profited by his 
very miscalculations. His pursuit brought him ever 
nearer to the truth. Finally he found the true key 
to the law of the heavens. He had put a new book 
in the canon of science. In his exultation he could 
say: "The die is cast, the book is written to be read 
now or by posterity, I care not which. It may well 
wait a century for a reader, since God has waited six 
thousand years for a discoverer.* ' So it may be said 
of the documentary theory of the Old Testament. It 
so fully meets the demands of literary criticism, it has 
been reached through so long and careful processes 



OLD TESTAMENT ORIGINS 125 

of investigation, it so represents the convergent results 
wrought by different schools of workers, it has such 
general approval by critical authorities, as to make 
it utterly improbable that the theory itself will ever 
be displaced. This is not to say that in details it may 
not be further developed and revised; but a knowledge 
of this theory will henceforth remain a sine qua non to 
the intelligent understanding of the historical books of 
the Old Testament. 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 



127 



I believe the four Gospels are genuine; for I see in them an emanation 
of that greatness which proceeded from the person of Christ, such as 
was never before manifested on earth. — Goethe. 

It is more inconceivable that several men should have united to 
forge the gospel than that a single person should have furnished the 
subject of it. The marks of its truth are so striking and inimitable 
that the inventor would be more astonishing than the hero. — Rousseau. 

The higher criticism is but a name for scientific scholarship scien- 
tifically used. Grant such scholarship legitimate, and the legitimacy 
of its use to all fit subjects must also be granted. Nobody denies, 
nobody even doubts, the legitimacy of its application to classical or 
ethnic literature, the necessity or the excellence of the work it has 
done, or, where the material allowed of it, the accuracy of the results 
it has achieved. ... To grant that many of its conclusions are arbi- 
trary, provisional, or problematical, is simply to say that it is a human 
science, created by men, worked by men, yet growing ever more per- 
fect with their mastery of their material. Now, the Scriptures either 
are or are not fit subjects for scholarship. If they are not, then all 
sacred scholarship has been and is a mistake, and they are a body of 
literature possessed of the inglorious distinction of being incapable 
of being understood. If they are, then the more scientific the scholar- 
ship the greater its use in the field of Scripture, and the more it is 
reverently exercised on a literature that can claim to be the preeminent 
sacred literature of the world, the more will that literature be honored. 
— A. M. Fairbairn. 

The Bible has the qualities claimed for it as an inspired book. 
These qualities, on the other hand, nothing but inspiration could 
impart. It leads to God and to Christ; it gives light on the deepest 
problems of life, death, and eternity; it discovers the way of deliver- 
ance from sin; it makes men new creatures; it furnishes the man of 
God completely for every good work. That it possesses these good 
qualities history and experience through all the centuries have attested; 
its saving, satisfying, and civilizing effects among all races of men in 
the world attest it still. The word of God is a "pure word." It is a 
true and "tried" word; a word never found wanting by those who 
rest themselves upon it. The Bible that embodies this word will 
retain its distinction as the Book of Inspiration till the end of time. — 
Professor James Orr. 



128 



CHAPTER IX 
NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 

The long-drawn battle of the critics has been fought 
largely around the foundations of the New Testament. 
As to the vital character of the New Testament literature, 
no testimony could be more emphatic or explicit than 
that which is furnished in the history of the critical 
movement. The entire process through which the 
New Testament has come to us in its present form 
may properly be said to have been critical. 

The selection of the New Testament books was a 
matter of slow growth, and was decided by a general 
spiritual consensus of the Church rather than by edict 
of official authority. The test on which any book 
was received was its assumed apostolic authorship, 
or at least that it be written by a man himself of apos- 
tolic character, one personally familiar with first sources 
of things concerning which he wrote. Mark and Luke, 
for instance, would meet required conditions of such 
authorship. The books received by common consent 
into the body of the New Testament, like those of the 
Old Testament, were made up of three distinct groups 
— the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, and the other 
books. In the order of authorship the Pauline Epistles, 
or at least several of them, are the oldest contributions 
to New Testament literature. The first general division 
of the accepted books included the four Gospels, Acts, 
thirteen Epistles ascribed to Saint Paul, the First Epis- 
tles respectively of John and Peter. 

129 



ISO MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

The Muratori Fragment, probably a document of 
the Roman Church, a very ancient manuscript discovered 
by Muratori at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, which reflects 
most valuable light on the early history of the New 
Testament, includes in addition to the above Second 
John, the book of Revelation, and Jude. As early as 
170 A. D., Hebrews, Second Peter, and Third John 
were also very generally used among the New Testa- 
ment books. There was, however, much doubt expressed 
as to the genuineness of the Second and Third Epistles 
and the Apocalypse of John, the Epistles of Jude and 
of James, and especially the second of Peter. The 
assumed Pauline authorship of the Epistle to the He- 
brews, while accepted by the Greek and Syrian Churches, 
was rejected by the Western Church. Aside from these 
writings, held by many to be of doubtful authority, 
there was a great mass of early literature consisting of 
Gospels, Acts, Epistles, much or all of it claiming apos- 
tolic authority. It required a truly critical process 
to eliminate the genuine literature from this mass. 
The period of uncertainty concerning books which 
should be admitted to the New Testament continued 
at least till the end of the fourth century. 

The term "canon" is very commonly used in relation 
to the New Testament as indicating an authoritatively 
definite list of its accepted books. The term in this 
sense needs to be very guardedly used. It seems to 
be a historic fact that no general council of the Church 
ever officially decided as to the books which should 
make up a New Testament canon. The Council of 
Trent in 1546 made such a pronouncement. But the 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 131 

decision of this council, so far as its critical or moral 
values are concerned, is not to be seriously taken by 
the Christian world at large. Rome at this time was 
disturbed by the Reformation, and had a pressing 
expedient demand for an authoritative statement as to 
the books of the Bible. It, therefore, settled its canon 
of the Old Testament by adding the Apocrypha to 
the list as we now have it; and it affirmed for the New 
Testament canon the list which now appears in the 
common Bible. This same council decreed as the 
" authentic* ' text of the Bible the Latin text in use 
by its leaders, though, as is well known, the Latin edi- 
tion then in use was exceedingly defective in its readings 
and inaccurate as a translation. It is to be remembered, 
however, that the Council of Trent at the time of its 
sitting was representative of only a section of the Chris- 
tian Church. 

To a period as late as the end of the second century 
there is not the slightest historic evidence of official 
declaration as to the canonicity of any single book or 
books of the New Testament. The Synod of Hippo, 
in North Africa, in which Augustine was most influ- 
ential, meeting in the year 393 A. D., gave its sanction 
to the entire list of books as they now appear. The 
Council of Carthage, meeting four years later, adopted 
the same list, the only difference being that this council 
ascribed to Saint Paul the authorship of fourteen Epistles, 
including that to the Hebrews, while the Council of 
Hippo left the authorship of Hebrews an open question. 
Neither of these councils was ecumenical in its character. 

It is to be emphasized that what is termed the New 
Testament canon was never so much settled by the 



132 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

decisions of councils as by the discriminating spiritual 
sense of the Church. It was by this process that there 
were finally winnowed and selected from a great volume 
of competing literature the accepted books of the New 
Testament. In this respect it was never the function 
of councils to do more than to place the final seal of 
official ratification upon the books -thus selected. In 
their superlative spiritual and moral qualities the books 
of the New Testament are unapproached, and in their 
selection from associated literatures, claiming apostolic 
character, they certainly give evidence of the survival 
of the fittest, so much so that this selection itself would 
seem to have been guided by the spirit of highest 
inspiration. 

TEXTUAL CRITICISM 

In considerjig the history of the New Testament 
text some facts should be distinctly remembered. In 
the first place, not a single original manuscript, or frag- 
ment of one, of any of the books is now known to be 
in existence. While it is true that the New Testament 
rests upon far better foundations of evidence than any 
other ancient prose writings, we have to-day no man- 
uscript copies earlier than the middle of the fourth 
century. These copies were, of course, made from 
still older manuscripts, but the earlier manuscripts 
have all perished. Second, it should be remembered 
that the New Testament originated long before the 
days of printed books. The only way by which its 
literary form could be preserved was through manuscript 
copies. For its books the Church far and near was 
entirely dependent upon handmade copies. A copy of 
the New Testament for private individual ownership 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 133 

would be a rare and costly luxury. The books were, 
however, read in the assemblies for public worship, 
and were doubtless mostly held in the custody of pastors 
and teachers. The early Church was distributed over 
three continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe. With mul- 
tiplying congregations the demand for manuscript copies 
of the New Testament was correspondingly increased. 

In the process of making these many manuscripts 
there would naturally arise, even after making largest 
allowance for conscientious and painstaking care on 
the part of copyists, much certainty of variations and 
mistakes. These variations in large part would come 
from unintentional causes, such as misreading, failure 
of memory, or, in case of dictation, mishearing. But 
it is probable that in cases of early manuscript-making 
variations frequently arose from intended corrections in 
existing copy. These early manuscripts would fall into 
the hands of persons who carried in memory the oral 
traditions of the sayings of Christ and the apostles. 
Naturally, they would sometimes interpolate or write 
upon the margins their own memory versions of given 
utterances. They would feel entirely free to do this, 
for, it must be remembered, these New Testament 
documents had not in that early time acquired the 
status of verbally inspired writings, as was assigned to 
the Hebrew Scriptures. It is evident, also, that by 
some such process occasional passages found their way 
into some of the early manuscripts that had no place 
in the original writings, as, for instance, the narrative 
of the woman taken in adultery, as found in John (7. 53 
to 8. 11). 

The Greek manuscripts of the New Testament which 



i 3 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

have come into possession of modern scholars are very- 
numerous, numbering now considerably more than two 
thousand, and with the likelihood that still others may- 
be discovered. In this large list of manuscripts the 
textual variations number more than one hundred and 
fifty thousand. Yet it is from this field of more than 
two thousand old manuscript copies, with their bewil- 
dering variations of texts, that modern scholarship is 
to find, if at all, the original New Testament Scriptures. 
This background must neither be misunderstood nor 
minified. The modern critic did not create it; he is 
in no way responsible for its existence. This is simply 
the existing wilderness which he must traverse if he 
is to reach surefootedly the original of inspired New 
Testament utterance. 

The difficulties, however, of the situation should not 
be converted in popular thought into an insuperable 
fatality. The great wealth of documents is in itself 
an unqualified testimony to the priceless values of the 
New Testament. The true text surely lies in these 
multitudes of readings. Their very numbers give to 
the New Testament an advantage, so far as ascertaining 
its true meaning is concerned, over any ancient writings 
in existence. And, while the variations run into high 
numbers, a knowledge of their essential character greatly 
minifies a view which might otherwise exist as to their 
damaging qualities. Professor Hort, than whom no 
better authority can be quoted, estimates that of all 
words composing the Greek Testament fully seven 
eighths are established beyond doubt. The work of 
the textual critic, then, would be confined to the remain- 
ing one eighth. In this section a very large proportion 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 135 

of the variations consists in the mere order of words 
and in differences of spelling — trifles in themselves. 
These duly considered, he thinks that the words still 
subject to doubt do not constitute more than one sixtieth 
of the New Testament. Examination of variations in 
this remnant shows that most of them, as affecting 
the meaning of the text, are of slight importance. His 
final judgment is that the field covering substantial 
variations "can hardly form more than a one-thousandth 
part of the entire text." The fact seems to be that 
all the manuscripts teach the same Christianity with- 
out impairment of either its doctrinal or moral pre- 
cepts. Dr. Ezra Abbot, who in his day ranked foremost 
among the textual critics, asserts that "no Christian 
doctrine or duty rests on these portions of the text 
which are affected by differences in the manuscripts; 
still less is anything essential in Christianity touched 
by the various readings." 

This analysis is reassuring. It is adapted to give 
comfort to those who, knowing merely that there is 
a great number of variant readings in the manuscripts, 
might otherwise assume that the entire structure of 
the New Testament is honeycombed with irreconcilable 
inharmonies. The great task of the textual student is 
hunting down through all these variations to find, if 
possible, the bed-rock of original utterance. The motive 
which prompts this pursuit is the most commendable 
possible. The ideal that always lures to best work is 
that of perfection itself. The artist cannot resign his 
easel while conscious that imperfections linger upon 
his picture. The present maker of the automobile seeks 
to surpass in beauty of model, in strength, in speed, 



i 3 6 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

in noiseless harmony of movement, the product made 
by any of his competitors. For our worship we build 
churches of artistic costliness, and we covet for their 
pulpits men of finished scholarship and of persuasive 
utterance. Here is the New Testament, the foundation 
on which all Christian worship rests. If it be true that 
this book contains God's most precious revelation of him- 
self to men; if it be true that its original words were writ- 
ten by men divinely inspired, then certainly it would seem 
that there could be no higher pursuit to which Christian 
scholarship may consecrate itself than the search for the 
very original New Testament word of apostle and evan- 
gelist. And this is what textual criticism means. 

The importance of the work itself is only equaled 
by the spirit of thoroughness in which it has been pros- 
ecuted. Not only has every distinct manuscript been 
closely examined, but every sentence, every word, every 
spelling, every mark of punctuation, has been subjected 
to microscopic scrutiny. The work of all schools has 
been submitted to such cross-examination and review 
as to make it seem impossible that any single teacher 
could have escaped critical attention. This work is 
modern. Indeed, its possibilities did not exist until 
in recent times. At the period of the Reformation the 
number of scholars in all Europe who could read Hebrew 
and Greek were exceedingly few. The first printed 
Greek Testament in existence was that of Erasmus, 
published at Basle, Switzerland, in 1516. The number 
of manuscripts employed by Erasmus in the succeeding 
editions of his work did not exceed altogether more 
than eight. For the book of Revelation he was depend- 
ent upon a mutilated and incomplete manuscript which 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 137 

he borrowed from Reuchlin. For the missing parts of 
this book he made a translation into poor Greek from 
the Latin Vulgate. The text of Erasmus was for a 
long period the ruling text. In 1633 the Elzevir pub- 
lishers of Leyden and Amsterdam issued a Greek Testa- 
ment corrected to the best of their knowledge and by 
such critical help as they could command. In the 
preface of this book they entered this statement in 
Latin: "Therefore thou hast the text now received 
by all: in which we give nothing altered or corrupt." 

Thus was introduced the famous "Textus Receptus," 
which, with slight exceptions, was accepted for two 
centuries as the orthodox standard of the New Testa- 
ment original. This text, as we now know, was very 
defective, but it was prevalently accepted until the 
middle of the nineteenth century. Professor Karl Lach- 
mann, of Berlin, bringing great scholarship and ability 
to his task, sought in prolonged effort to restore the 
oldest text. He did not have at command some of 
the greatest aids which have since been discovered 
for such a work; but he established a new basis for 
textual criticism of the New Testament. He died in 
1 85 1. Following there appear in this field of work 
the illustrious names of Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott, 
and Hort. These have all followed in the course marked 
by Lachmann, but have had the great advantage of 
aids which to him were quite or comparatively unknown. 
The now famous codices, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, 
Vaticanus, and others only second in importance to 
these, have thrown a flood of light upon the text 
origins of the New Testament. The Codices Sinaiticus 
and Vaticanus especially are supposed to reflect the 



i 3 8 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

original text more closely than any other manuscripts 
now known. The history of these codices reads like 
a romance. All of these manuscripts were accessible 
to the later workers above named. 

It is not to be assumed that the work of textual 
revision of the New Testament is now finally complete. 
Other corrective sources of information may yet be 
discovered, but it may be confidently asserted that the 
field of possible corrections in the interests of a pure 
text has been greatly narrowed by the work of recent 
scholarship. These modern workers have summoned to 
their court of inquiry witnesses from all accessible 
sources, and have given most exhaustive and searching 
analysis to all testimony received. While there are 
minor points here and there of uncertainty, the general 
results now reached have come through processes so 
enlightened, and are based upon a critical judgment 
so unanimous, as to place their finality beyond serious 
question. As for the outcome of all, there can be no 
intelligent doubt that there is now placed at the com- 
mand of every thoughtful reader of the New Testament 
a text more reliably in harmony with original sources 
than was ever before accessible. It remains to be said 
that only in the proportion in which a correct text of 
the priceless records of the New Testament is to be 
regarded as valuable can we find the just measure of 
the worth and service of that scholarship which has 
so far brought about this result. 

LITERARY HISTORY 

It is no overstatement to say that no historic move- 
ment of thought has been more significant in itself, 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 139 

or has been more implicitly fraught with great moral 
consequences, than has that of biblical criticism. To 
the vital center of all this movement the New Testa- 
ment has stood nearest. Its records by an instinct 
both of gratitude and of defense have in the common 
thought of the Church been most jealously cherished. 
It has been religiously felt that the New Testament 
in a distinctive and well-nigh exclusive sense embodies 
in itself the foundation truths of the Christian faith. 
It has been looked upon as something to be approached 
only in the most reverential spirit. There has been 
much in the traditional history environing the book 
to beget this popular feeling. It has been thought of 
as the infallible record of God's most precious revela- 
tion of himself. By large consent it has been thought 
a thing too sacred to receive any touch of revision from 
human criticism. The very attempt would be an act 
as essentially sacrilegious as to reach forth a profane 
hand against the ark of the Lord. At the heart of 
the New Testament lies the story of the One Life in 
which God himself found a supreme incarnation. There 
the deeds of this matchless life are related, his very 
words recorded. One of the traditions of the Koran 
is that it was written in heaven near by the eternal 
throne, and that it was passed by angelic hands from 
the table on which it rested direct into the keeping 
of Mohammed's messenger. So quite naturally in the 
Church there has been a cherished estimate of the New 
Testament which has attached to it all the sacredness 
of a book which might actually have been made in 
heaven, and thence passed ready-made for human uses. 
That the underlying assumption in all this is greatly 



i 4 o MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

fraught with error in no way affects or modifies the 
feeling itself. This feeling was not born of a critical 
parentage. It is the child of traditional authority. It 
has been nursed and developed in an atmosphere which 
repels invasion by the critical spirit. 

It is indeed difficult, in many cases practically im- 
possible, for minds under the dominion of this traditional 
feeling to understand how criticism can have in itself 
a holy function. That the era of modern biblical criti- 
cism is a providential movement, is for the Church 
and kingdom of God on earth fraught with divinest 
meaning, is for such minds both incredible and inexplain- 
able. That it is the legitimate mission, a high duty 
of the modern mind, whose vision has been vastly broad- 
ened and quickened by new revelations of science and 
by the spirit of a new philosophy, to bring to the New 
Testament the light of new knowledge and of more 
intelligent interpretation, is something for which the 
type of mind in question has no hospitality. That it 
is due to the New Testament itself, a most sacred duty 
to Christianity, that the light of the most perfectly 
developed scientific and critical knowledge should be 
focused upon its record is a consideration for which the 
mere traditionalist has neither welcome nor appreciation. 

But whatever may be the dominion of traditional 
feeling, here or there, a great fact is — a fact as distinct 
as the sunrise on a new day — that we are living in a 
distinctive intellectual age. Dr. John Fiske years ago, 
in his little book, The Idea of God, said: "In their mental 
habits, in their methods of inquiry, and in the data 
at their command, the men of the present day who 
have fully kept pace with the scientific movement are 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 141 

separated from the men whose education ended in 1830 
by an immeasurably wider gulf than has ever before 
divided one progressive generation of men from their 
predecessors.* ' 

Whatever the duty in the matter, or however great 
the advantage of results to be achieved, the question 
of the introduction of a period of critical study of the 
New Testament was not primarily one to be decided 
by Christian scholarship. It was a question which 
forced itself upon the attention of the Church. When 
in 1835 there appeared Strauss's Life of Jesus and Baur's 
critical hypotheses on the Pastoral Epistles there was 
sent forth a challenge which was heard at every seat 
of Christian learning. This challenge came like the 
booming of an enemy's cannon. Under the brilliancy 
and suddenness of the assault, the first sensation of 
Christian scholars was one of consternation. This was 
the historic summons, however, to a general reinvesti- 
gation, and to a new defense, of the very foundations 
of the faith. And right nobly was this summons re- 
sponded to. The gage of battle was promptly taken 
up, its issues fearlessly met. The theories of both 
Strauss and Baur were duly disarmed and displaced, 
though to both of these names conservative scholarship 
owes and acknowledges a lasting debt of gratitude. 
While Strauss's theories regarding Christ have been 
wholly rejected, yet his Life of Jesus was the beginning 
of a historic discussion the outcome of which has been 
more clearly, convincingly, and richly than ever before 
to establish and to magnify the claims of the historic 
Christ upon the thought of mankind. Baur's theory, 
based essentially upon the assumption of an irrecon- 



i 4 2 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

cilable antagonism between Paul and the older apostles, 
while now entirely discredited, yet left him the founder 
of critical principles which have proven of high value 
in the long discussion which has since ensued. 

It can by no means be claimed that higher criticism 
has completed its mission with the New Testament. 
Its work, however, is so far complete as to give great 
assurance of its permanent values. This criticism was 
early removed from a merely negative or destructive 
character. It was espoused by men of faith and of 
the ablest constructive abilities. The work in its progress 
has met with some very baffling problems, such, for 
instance, as those which have been found to inhere 
in connection with the Fourth Gospel. One general 
fact has been very clearly discovered, namely, that the 
old apologetics will not meet the new conditions. The 
entire New Testament has been set very largely in a 
new perspective. But, while traditional thought con- 
cerning both its teaching and history has been perforce 
largely modified, it may confidently be said that the 
inspiration of the New Testament was never so mani- 
fest, its ethical and spiritual content never so rich, 
as when seen in the light of its new setting. 

So far as the literature itself of the New Testament 
is concerned, every space to the very minutest in its 
entire field has been searched in the fiercest light of 
criticism. As the outcome of all, so far as the genuine- 
ness of the books is involved, it may be said that a 
conservative view holds that of the older group of New 
Testament literature — the Pauline Epistles — of the thir- 
teen ascribed to Paul's authorship, the following may 
be accepted as genuine, namely: The Epistles to the 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM 143 

Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Ephe- 
sians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians. Historical 
study of the two Epistles to Timothy and the one to 
Titus has discovered so many difficulties as to incline 
some conservative critics to doubt their Pauline author- 
ship. Professor Hort, while acknowledging the objec- 
tions, says that, to the best of his belief, they were 
written by Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews, while 
traditionally assigned to Paul, has by common consent 
for a long period been conceded as not of his authorship. 
The authorship of the Epistle of James, which has gen- 
erally been assigned to James, the brother of the Lord, 
is now regarded as quite uncertain. Its approximate 
date is also a question which is not satisfactorily estab- 
lished. That Saint Peter was the author of the first 
Epistle bearing his name meets with such support as 
to permit restfulness in this conclusion. In literary 
form Second Peter and Jude show much interdependence. 
It is considered doubtful that Second Peter could have 
been the source of Jude. If, however, Jude is the source 
of the former, then it would seem decisive that Peter 
could not have been the author of the Second Epistle. 
Jude was a brother of James, but whether he is the 
author of the Epistle bearing this name is a matter 
of uncertainty, the probabilities being against the claim. 
The view in general reached concerning the Synoptic 
Gospels is that Mark is the oldest of the three; that 
both Matthew and Luke drew largely upon Mark for 
their narratives, but that in all probability there were 
other existing documents upon which all drew more 
or less in common. As to the genuineness of the Synoptic 
Gospels there is substantial unanimity of conclusion. 



i 4 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Most recent research, especially as set forth in Harnack's 
Luke, seems to make it indubitable that the Acts of the 
Apostles was written by the author of the Third Gospel. 

Concerning the writings commonly attributed to the 
apostle John, both the three Epistles and the Fourth 
Gospel are conceded in the order of New Testament 
books to be of comparatively late origin. The book of 
Revelation, if from the apostle's pen, is probably the ear- 
liest of the five productions bearing his name. There has 
been much discussion as to the authorship of all these 
books save perhaps the First Epistle. No fiercer critical 
controversy has been waged around any part of the New 
Testament than around the authorship of the Fourth 
Gospel. The preponderant conclusion of all is that if 
this Gospel was not directly written by the apostle 
John it was in any event composed by one who familiarly 
knew and represented his personal thought and teachings. 

Thus, without entering into the merits of the discussion 
— a discussion which would require a volume for adequate 
treatment — I have endeavored briefly to indicate what 
would seem to me a fair critical consensus as to the author- 
ship and genuineness of the books of the New Testament. 
Some facts should be clearly borne in mind : 

i. If there are real difficulties — and there are many 
of them — in ascertaining the authorship, the date, or 
the real status of any of the books of the New Testa- 
ment, these difficulties have in no way been created 
by the processes of criticism. They are difficulties which 
inhere in the situation, difficulties which criticism finds 
when it approaches the New Testament as a field for 
investigation, and to the solution of which criticism 
has devoted its ablest efforts. 



NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM i 4 S 

2. Whatever uncertainty may remain as to dates and 
authorship of given books, enough is known as to the 
character and the period of all the books to assure 
confidence that their authors stood very close to the 
sources of Christian history, and that they have given 
us genuine and faithful portrayal of the teachings of 
both Christ and his apostles. However unknowing we 
may be as to the authorship or dates of certain of its 
books, the New Testament as a whole gives us an unim- 
peachable record of the vital beginnings of Christian 
history. 

3. It should also be said that most of the books about 
which conservative criticism feels more or less uncer- 
tainty are the books concerning which, from the begin- 
ning, there has been an attitude of questioning on the 
part of the Church. 

4. Finally, if the books about which there is doubt 
are left entirely out of consideration, there is, in the 
books concerning whose authorship there is no question, 
sufficient material on which to plant securely the founda- 
tions of the Christian Church. Whatever else criticism 
has done or has failed to do, it has, by going to the 
bottom facts, by laying bare its very first things, demon- 
strated that the historic foundations of Christianity are 
indestructible. In response to all intelligent inquiry the 
evidences for the divinity of the Christian religion as 
judged by its initial records were never so clear, never 
so indubitable, never so invincible as now: 

"As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 



147 



Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever 
believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed: He 
enlarges somewhat, by fresh discovery, his view of the universe, and 
consequently his Theorem of the Universe, — which is an infinite 
Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view 
or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement: he enlarges somewhat, 
I say; finds somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible 
to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has dis- 
covered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the 
history of Mankind we see it summed up into great historical 
amounts, — revelations, new epochs. — Carlyle. 

Certain it is that Augustine's final dogmatic scheme has turned 
Christianity from a religion of joy and hopefulness into the 
most appalling pessimism that the human imagination has ever 
conceived. . . . 

But we say, with all the emphasis that is possible to us — for it is 
a time to speak plainly — that the "Calvinism" which Calvin received 
and handed down is not "the Christian interpretation of a truth 
many lesser minds have feared to face," is not the Christian inter- 
pretation of the facts of life, but a gross misinterpretation; a theory 
of the divine character and of human destiny which has no foundation 
either in the New Testament or in our knowledge of ourselves; a 
nightmare which it is time we woke from, an evil legacy of the past 
which, in the interests of religion and of human sanity, needs to be 
buried — deep beyond all possibility of disinterment. — Brierle y. 

Christ makes the Fatherhood the basis of all the duties which man 
owes to God. Supreme love to God is possible only because God is 
love. On the ground of mere sovereignty or judicial and autocratic 
authority, the first commandment could never be enjoined. We 
cannot love simply because we will or wish or are commanded, but 
only because we are loved. Supreme affection is possible only through 
the Sovereign Fatherhood. And what is true of this first is true of 
all our other duties. Worship is to be in spirit and in truth, because 
it is worship of the Father. Prayer is to be constant and simple and 
sincere, because it is offered to the Father. We are to give alms in 
simplicity and without ostentation, because the Father sees in secret. 
We are to be forgiving, because the Father forgives. Obedience is 
imitation of God, a being perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. 
In a word, duty is but the habit of the filial spirit; and it is possible 
and incumbent on all men, because all are sons. — A. M. Fairbairn. 



148 



CHAPTER X 
GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 

Three factors are requisite to the ends of revelation: 
the revealing source, the truth to be imparted, the 
receiving and apprehending mind. It is obvious that 
without the last of these factors there can be no real 
revelation. Revelation addresses itself to intelligence. 
The night skies might be as thickly studded with stars 
as now, the clouds float as fleecily, the glow of the rising 
and setting sun furnish all external conditions of beauty; 
but if the earth were without intelligent inhabitants 
the whole scene would be meaningless. Revelation to be 
effective must be apprehended by, and translated into 
the possession of, a human intelligence. And so, in 
the last resort, the matter of revelation is largely one 
of interpretation. This vital and underlying fact very 
clearly indicates that revelation itself is conditioned by 
the capacity and intelligence of the mind to which it 
is addressed. 

It is not within my present purpose to discuss any 
specific view of revelation or of inspiration. I do not 
believe that, under any philosophy which may be ac- 
cepted as rationally adequate to the case, the Bible can 
be accounted for except as containing a record of special 
divine revelations to mankind; and its appeal in general 
to the moral soul of the race is explained only in the 
fact that a spirit of divine inspiration breathes through 
its volume as in no other literature of the world. In 
this view, however, there is nothing inharmonious with 

149 



150 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

that which declares that vision, insight of a high order, 
is necessary for the human appreciation of any divine 
manifestation. In the realm of the spiritual as in the 
natural world there is an unlimited wealth of truth 
which can be appropriated only by the deeply in-seeing 
soul. As in philosophical and scientific realms it 
is only the exceptional seers who have explored and 
brought to the common knowledge the hidden treasures 
of thought and of fact, so only to a class of specially 
gifted — inspired — minds, prophets, apostles, saints, have 
there been revealed the higher truths and the richer 
treasures of the spiritual world. In the spiritual as in 
the natural world it seems to be God's order that the 
great democracy of the human mind shall be dependent 
upon the message of the in-seeing, of the inspired, prophet 
for the knowledge of the larger truths. It is this in- 
seeing, this inspired, prophet who has led all the intel- 
lectual and moral advances of human history. 

All teaching processes are limited by the capacity 
for reception. We do not undertake to teach our chil- 
dren in terms of abstruse philosophy. Between the 
kindergarten and the postgraduate courses of the uni- 
versity there is a long and graded distance. A child 
thinks as a child, and all thought which he shall intel- 
ligently appreciate must be on the plane of childlike 
mind. But when he becomes intellectually a full-grown 
man he has put away childish thoughts and is at home 
with mature themes. And this illustrates God's law of 
dealing with the race. History in its great trends 
clearly demonstrates the progressive character of human 
knowledge. It would seem, indeed, that there are some 
exceptions to this law. We hear of "lost arts." It is 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 151 

certain that some civilizations have developed periods 
of brilliant intellectuality which have been followed by 
mental decline. The comparatively modern period of 
the "Dark Ages," involving all Europe, was like a long 
night that set in after the reign of brilliant civilizations, 
civilizations that carried in themselves the most perfect 
fruits of intellect, of art, of law, of government, of mo- 
rality. But these exceptions are only apparent as against 
the general law of racial mental progress. They fall 
under the analyses of a philosophy which quite fully 
explains their place in general history. All apparent 
exceptions duly considered, the fundamental and abid- 
ing fact is that what we think of as the world's progress 
is measured by the world's growing knowledge. 

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." 

The history of anthropology uncovers long ages 
through which man, however brutelike in strength, or 
however fiercely he might fight his battles, was exceed- 
ingly limited in his intellectual attainments, commanding 
only the most rudimentary knowledge of nature's forces. 
Indeed, a great pathos of human history is that man, 
living in a world so rich in resources, should have spent 
untold ages in such mental undiscernment as to have 
secured for himself only the slightest knowledge and 
mastery of nature's wealth. In the days when the 
first man walked the earth nature was just as rich in 
all the facts and the material out of which the modern 
sciences are constructed as to-day. Nearly all the 
great sciences were born but yesterday. The splendid 
heritage of art which now gives to man a real sovereignty 
— a sovereignty that seems more wonderful than magic 



iS2 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

— over earth and sea and air is but the gift of to-day. 
Yet through all the millenniums man groped his way 
in this richly stored world apparently in sublime ignorance 
of the fact that nature, like the locked boxes of a great 
safety vault, was only awaiting the key of his inven- 
tion to enrich and crown him with her illimitable treasures. 

The fact is that nature through all the ages has lifted 
itself on every human pathway like a veritable temple 
of revelation, its windows aflame with the light of heaven, 
its every wall and space crowded with the records of 
divine truth. Through all these ages the doors of this 
temple have been wide open inviting entrance and 
exploration. For the interpreter of its records there 
has ever been waiting the secret of infinite knowledge 
and of unlimited power. The astounding fact is that 
through the long centuries man has walked the earth 
as stupidly as a tramp; through ignorance he has missed 
his birthright of lordship, he has failed utterly to develop 
the discerning intelligence of translating and appro- 
priating nature's uninventoried wisdom and wealth. But 
if it be true that the race has been slow in developing 
a knowledge of nature's more material side, if it be 
true that the physical sciences have delayed their advent 
till these later days, then how much more in the higher 
realms of psychic, spiritual, and moral revelation is man's 
progress likely to be of slow growth! The limitations 
of racial knowledge, of insight, of perception, have ever 
been the barriers which not even God has been able to 
transcend in imparting his revelations to mankind. 

It may be all in the divine plan, it would seem doubt- 
less so; but the childhood of the race has long tarried, 
and God has had to wait suiting times and develop- 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 153 

ment for the impartation of his larger revelations. If 
it were possible for us to catch from the lips of the first 
devout Hebrew his conception of the God whom he 
worshiped, we should find that conception poor and 
meager as compared with the divine thought which in 
the fullness of time was revealed in Jesus Christ. In- 
deed, the earliest recorded thought of God given us 
in the Hebrew records seems at best to give no larger 
conception than that of the tribal deity. The acts 
attributed to Deity in some of the Old Testament nar- 
ratives are plainly such as to indicate conceptions which 
are entirely unworthy of the God of Christian revela- 
tion. God is represented as sanctioning acts which 
would be only abhorrent to him whom Christ taught 
us to worship as our "Father which is in heaven." A 
just inference seems to be that the framers of these early 
narratives had very immature, even infantile, conceptions 
not only as to God's character, but that in their phil- 
osophy they sometimes attributed to him acts which 
were prompted simply by their own interests. 

One can hardly read the narratives of the destruction 
of the Canaanites under Joshua, and many kindred 
happenings in the periods of Judges and of Kings, the 
repeated stories of the ruthless slaughter of all adult 
male populations in an enemy's territory, and the taking 
of the women and children into captivity, and at the 
same time feel that all this could have been ordered 
and approved by the God of the New Testament. If it 
should be said that these stories are in keeping with 
the spirit of warfare among a primitive and cruel people, 
then no exception can be taken to the statement. If, 
further, it should be declared that the victors in these 



154 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

barbarous conflicts were fully persuaded that their vic- 
tories were due to divine favor, this could as readily 
be believed. The earliest pagan records abundantly re- 
late attempts on the part of those going forth to battle 
to propitiate and to secure the favor of the gods. It 
would be most natural for the earlier warriors of Israel 
to ascribe their victories to Jehovah, and to accredit 
him with the ordering of their battles, and the justifi- 
cation of their methods. But all this, so far from proving 
that God did prescribe and approve these rude methods 
of warfare, may only suggest how greatly lacking were 
these ancient warriors themselves in a knowledge of 
God's true spirit. The God whose face is seen in Jesus 
Christ had not much entered into the hearts of these 
men. They were doubtless firm believers in God, but 
their conceptions of God were more shaped by their 
human and unrefined ideals than by any full and enrich- 
ing revelation of the divine character. The spirit of 
the Psalmist who pictured to himself a satisfying happi- 
ness in the destruction of the daughter of Babylon, 
and in the dashing of her little ones against the stones, 
would seem infinitely far from inspired by Him who 
commands that we shall love our enemies, bless them 
who curse us, and who sendeth his rain alike upon the 
just and the unjust. 

Dr. Albert C. Knudson, professor of Old Testament 
exegesis in Boston University, in speaking of this general 
phase of morality as set forth in some of the Old Testa- 
ment records, says: "The deception practiced by the 
patriarchs is recorded without condemnation. The crude 
and cruel law of retaliation is sanctioned as of divine 
origin. The treachery of Jael is highly lauded. And an 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 155 

intense and bitter national spirit is inculcated, one that 
brooks no sympathetic intercourse with foreign peoples, 
and permits no eye of pity to fall even on their wives 
and children if they stand in the way of Israel's mission. 
This narrow spirit we find in widely separated portions 
of the Old Testament. It appears in the later prophetic 
utterances; it is embodied in the legislation; and it 
receives startlingly strong expression in the imprecatory 
Psalms." 

It is indeed advocated by strong writers — for instance, 
by Professor A. M. Fairbairn in his great book, The 
Place of Christ in Modern Theology — that Christ alone 
was the real creator of monotheism as a realized religious 
faith. He insists that the monotheism of the Hebrews 
never at best reached beyond henotheism, a practical 
belief that Jehovah was the supreme God whose sovereign 
services were rather for Israel than for all mankind. 
It was reserved for Christ to practicalize in faith the 
conception that God is not only the Creator, but also 
the universal Father, of men. In Christ we have the 
express image of the Father's glory, full of grace and 
truth. He is the supreme revelation. The culmination 
of all of God's dealings with his world centers in him. 
Human thought will never transcend Christ. No human 
mind has been large enough to exhaust the riches of 
revelation in him. He is more and more attracting to 
himself the wonder and the worship of mankind. This 
process will go on indefinitely and increasingly. It will 
be hereafter and forever impossible to obscure the place 
of Christ in the world's thought. 

Unfortunately, and for long ages, Christ's real historic 
place has been kept largely in the background even of 



156 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Christian thought; and the real agency in this obscure- 
ness has been the Church bearing his name. Christ 
was the creator of Christianity, and in the first ages, 
when its teachings and spirit fell upon the world pure 
from their source, this Christianity proved itself an 
irresistible moral force in the world. It conquered the 
Roman empire, inspired human society with new spir- 
itual ideals, and founded a Church whose life has per- 
sisted and flourished when all contemporary civilizations 
have perished. If the ideal Christianity as shaped by 
Christ himself, and as preached and lived by early 
inspired apostles and evangelists, could have continued 
in incorruptible course, it is impossible now to say in 
what measure, and how early, it might have transformed 
the world. 

But the very popular successes of Christianity were 
to prove the sources of its greatest impairment. It 
attracted to itself countless and unregenerate hordes 
representing all faiths and all philosophies. The Roman 
empire had domesticated in its Pantheon all the gods 
of the pagan world. In the breadth of her policies 
Rome had not assumed to interfere with the religions 
of her conquered provinces. Under her imperial banners 
the paganisms of the world were protected in their 
various cults and worship. But all this meant that 
Rome under the wings of her wide authority had brooded 
a vast medley of religious faiths, philosophies, and 
skepticisms. It followed, and inevitably, that when 
the tides of this mixed pagan world set toward Chris- 
tianity very much of its conversion to the new faith 
was nominal rather than real, superficial rather than 
vital. Multitudes of the converts brought to their new 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 157 

religious citizenship the household gods of their old 
paganisms. It was impossible that Christianity with 
this vast influx of unassimilated life in her nominal 
ranks should be able to maintain the distinctive purity, 
vigor, and spiritual aggressiveness which so fully char- 
acterized its original movements. An unregenerate pagan- 
ism, like a vicious alloy, had entered its life with the 
effect of deteriorating both the quality and the beauty 
of its moral force. A river which flows through wide 
territory, no matter how high or pure its source, will 
take in solution the soils through which it passes, and 
these soils in turn will give tone and color to its waters. 
It was this process which modified Christianity when it 
took possession of the Roman empire. 

But there was another great force, or combination 
of forces, that wrought simultaneously with the paganism 
of Rome, and that was Greek philosophy. If the mind 
of the Roman was legal, that of the Greek was phil- 
osophical. When Greek philosophy might otherwise have 
passed quietly to its final rest, Christianity furnished 
the subject upon which its revived energies fastened 
and fed themselves. It naturally resulted that the 
most fruitful theologians of the patristic Church were 
men who had been trained in the Grecian schools. The 
juridical type of the Roman and the philosophical type 
of the Grecian mind, while holding much in common, 
were generically so unlike as to make impracticable as 
between them a harmonious merger of fundamental be- 
liefs. If Christianity was to become the chief objective 
to which these two types should direct their energies, 
it was inevitable that ultimately two Churches should 
result — the Grecian and the Roman. But these two 



i 5 8 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Churches, the one through its philosophy, the other 
by its genius for government, constituted themselves 
the custodians and interpreters of Christian thought as 
against the world. When the Roman empire disin- 
tegrated it left a heritage of peerless ideals of law and 
of government. Christianity then loomed up as the one 
great possibility, as the one community of vital coherence 
and of common interests large enough in promise to 
transfer and to appropriate to itself the splendid imperi- 
alism which the empire dying had left tenant less. The 
transfer of Roman imperialism to the Church was gradual. 
But the Roman ecclesiastic had imperialism in his blood; 
he had too vitally imbibed the proud traditions of his 
national history not to prove an apt statesman in adapt- 
ing the principles of Roman government to the Christian 
community. 

The Roman Catholic Church with its finally developed 
hierarchy, its papal absolutism, its claim to infallibility, 
its authoritative monopoly of the Christian Scriptures 
and its assumption of being by divine right their sole 
interpreter, its ruthless enslavement of the Christian 
conscience — all this was a logical evolution. But what 
was potentially true of Christianity in its relations to 
Roman law was equally true in its relations to Grecian 
philosophy. It was the one interest which brought to 
this philosophy a new awakening, which furnished a 
new basis and a new reason for its continued activities. 

The dominant theologians among the Fathers were 
men of Greek inheritance and training. Among them 
were such great names as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, 
Jerome, Athanasius, Augustine. Jerome and Augustine 
belonged to the Western Church. As ecclesiastics they 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 159 

were fully imbued with the Roman spirit. Augustine's 
tremendous dogmas of the Divine Sovereignty were thor- 
oughly the offspring of Roman imperialism. But as 
biblical interpreters both Jerome and Augustine were 
greatly influenced by the Alexandrine school of thought. 
In general, it may be said that the Greek mind furnished 
to the Church, East and West, the type of theology 
and of scriptural interpretation which dominated Chris- 
tian thought down to, and even after, the period of the 
Reformation. 

Thus the Christian Church through many centuries 
of its history was practically directed by two great 
forces, Grecian theology and papal ecclesiasticism — the 
one dominant as an intellectual inheritance, the other 
controlling because armed with imperial authority. The 
power which these two forces, singly or combined, came 
to exercise over the human mind is simply incalculable. 
It is doubtless within the bounds of truth to declare 
that in the ages faced by Wycliffe and Luther the philos- 
ophy of scriptural interpretation as inherited from the 
Fathers wielded a more direct and far greater influence 
upon the thought of the Christian world than did the 
combined teachings of Christ and his apostles. Christ 
and the writers of the New Testament, indeed, were 
largely lost in the maze of patristic allegory. As an 
ecclesiastical system the papal hierarchy stands as one 
of the most consummate creations of human genius. 
As such the historian may well devote to it his closest 
studies, and for its many excellencies he may justly 
bestow upon it highest eulogy. 

But, alas! the most favorable picture we may have 
of the Church of Rome is not that which comes to us 



160 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

as we rise fresh from the reading of the New Testament. 
In the New Testament we find no remotest hint of an 
imperial pope, none of a triple-crowned and purple-robed 
priesthood, no suggestion of sacerdotal agents with author- 
ity to open or shut the gates of heaven as against the 
souls of men. In the New Testament the Church is 
conceived of as the body of believers, as the company 
of individuals who have joined themselves to Christ and 
who have received his spirit. Ministers are given to 
the Church, but the idea of ministry is that of service. 
The New Testament minister is most approved who is 
most like his Master, giving himself in spiritual service 
to the needy, the poor, and the sick, preaching a gospel 
of good tidings, of forgiveness and salvation to sinful 
men. The service of the ministry is ethical and spiritual, 
and there is nowhere any suggestion of a function that 
is ceremonial or sacerdotal in its character. It is the 
privilege of all to present themselves direct to the heav- 
enly Father through his Son. The only priesthood aside 
from Christ is the common priesthood of believers. 

It should by no means be inferred that the Church 
through the period above described was destitute of 
the spirit of a true Christianity. In spite of all obscure- 
ments of New Testament doctrines through faulty 
teaching, and notwithstanding fearful corruptions in the 
rule and life of the Church, the pure spirit of Christ 
was so vital that the most perverted ages were not per- 
mitted to pass without the development of exceptional 
saints whose lives are a perpetual adornment of Christian 
history. 

And now I return from this lengthy but needed state- 
ment in relation to the influences of Greek philosophy 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION i6r 

and the Papal Church to say that, whatever may have 
been the values to Christian thought of the Grecian 
Fathers, or whatever may be said in defense of the 
Roman Church, it remains true that by the mystifying 
and sequestering of the Christian Scriptures they ob- 
scured from popular knowledge the historic sources of 
Christianity and they suceeded largely in putting Christ 
himself into the background of Christian thought. 

Such a history prepares us to appreciate in some 
measure the beneficent mission of the modern critical 
movement. This movement has recovered the Bible to 
the people. Of course, due recognition should be given 
to previous efforts in this direction. Wycliffe, Luther, 
and other reformers translated the Scriptures into the 
popular tongues. A great emphasis of the Reformation 
was to call the faith of the people back to the Bible as 
the supreme authority in matters of salvation. But, 
after the Reformation had done its work in this respect, 
the Scriptures were far from being emancipated from 
false methods. It has been the high function of the 
critical movement to expose and to destroy vicious 
traditional methods of interpretation. It has not only 
done this, but at the cost of incessant, enormous, and 
reverent toil it has searched the foundations of the 
biblical books, has reproduced the historic atmospheres 
in which they were written, and has given us both the 
Old and the New Testaments in far more perfect and 
intelligent forms than have ever been possible in any 
previous age of human learning. So far as the New 
Testament is concerned — and this is now specially in 
our thought — the historic settings of the books, its pure 
and unglossed utterances, its own original and direct 



i62 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

message to mankind, in a measure far more perfect 
than was ever before true, are now our first-hand pos- 
session. And the most beneficent outcome of it all is 
the re-revelation of Christ and of his teachings. 

To these features I shall hereafter call more specific 
attention *, but certainly no phenomenon in literary 
history in its significance bears any comparison to the 
inexhaustible and critical study which has been given 
to the historic Christ in the last seventy-five years. 
Upon no other character in the world has there so fiercely 
beaten the white light of critical investigation. And it 
is but a mild statement of fact to declare that to-day 
he has emerged from the ordeal to receive acclaim as 
a being more wonderful, more divine, more reverenced, 
more worshiped than ever before. Not only this, but 
never so much as now has he drawn to himself the world's 
best thinking. Already enthroned without competitor in 
the sanest worship of mankind, his dominion promises 
to widen until the wisest and the noblest of all the earth 
shall lay their tribute at his feet. 

The fact here to be emphasized is that out of all this 
fresh study of Christ there has come a wonderful enlarge- 
ment in human conception of the scope of his person 
and mission. In the light of this study Christ has not 
only seemed to be the supreme revelation, but it is 
increasingly felt that men have hardly more than begun 
to take account of the wealth and significance of this 
revelation. It is certain that the critical study of 
original sources has necessitated great changes in the 
perspective through which we must view important 
Christian truth. For one thing, this study carries us 
far away from either the Grecian philosophical or the 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 163 

Roman governmental interpretation of God. A truth of 
recent discovery to the Church, but one which lay most 
vitally at the very basis of all Christ's mission and 
teaching, is 

THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD 

In the theology of Augustine, which dominated the 
Church for a millennium and a half, and which was 
powerfully reinforced in the sixteenth century by Calvin, 
this greatest of all truths received in its real New Testa- 
ment sense almost no recognition. The conceptions 
which both Augustine and Calvin transferred to Deity 
were those derived from absolutism in government. The 
God of the Augustinian theology was a despot who ruled 
all things by his sovereign decree. He even decreed 
the existence of sin, and glorified himself as the eternal 
prison-keeper of its helpless victims. In the philosophy 
of Calvin's horribile decretum no complaint can stand 
against God on the ground that he elects some and 
reprobates others, because, while those whom he elects 
merit no favor, those whom he reprobates deserve pun- 
ishment. In short, Calvinism interpreted God through 
sovereignty, and the sovereignty as conceived was of 
a type which happily has been entirely displaced by the 
mellowing inspirations of a better age. 

Between the conception of the Fatherhood as taught 
by Jesus and that of the sovereign God as set forth in 
the Augustinian theology there is an impassable gulf. 
The divine Fatherhood is not only fundamental in 
the revelation of Jesus Christ, but its acceptance de- 
mands a theology far different from what was possible 
under the Augustinian conception. In the light of 
Christ's teachings every movement of God toward 



1 64 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

humanity is from the standpoint of a father, is prompted 
by motives of love. God creates man that he might 
have an eternal heritage of children in his own likeness, 
children whom he could love, with whom he could com- 
mune, upon whom he could bestow his own nurture, 
and whom he could everlastingly enrich with the inher- 
itances of- -sainthood. The Divine Father was not 
responsible for sin. So far as we can see, he could 
not beget children in his own likeness without sin as 
a liability, at least a possibility. That a free being 
endowed with the power of rational choice could be 
such and at the same time exempt from the possibility 
of choosing evil is inconceivable. God in begetting 
human children took this risk. We are probably not 
well prepared to measure the catastrophe of sin as held 
in the thought of the Divine Father. For all that we 
know sin may have furnished the supreme opportunity 
for the manifestation of the Father's love. Its full 
mission may be so overruled as forever to immeasurably 
enhance upon the thought of the saints the values of 
God's Fatherhood. 

Of one thing we may rest assured, and that is, the 
catastrophe having fallen, the Father could never abandon 
his erring child to the doom of sin. The eternal Father- 
hood can do nothing less than to redeem, nothing less 
than to institute every condition and agency for the 
restitution of the sinning child. Sin may possibly per- 
vert and alienate the filial nature, and put the child in an 
attitude of perpetual estrangement to the Father's love; 
but the Father-heart will never cease to yearn for the re- 
turn of the wanderer. The prodigal may never put his face 
homeward, but the Divine Father can never forget him. 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 165 

This does not mean that there are not included in 
God's Fatherhood all the elements of a righteous sov- 
ereignty; but it is the sovereignty essential to Father- 
hood and is something infinitely different from the 
mere incarnation of despotic will. Righteousness of 
motive and of conduct is an essential of the divine house- 
hold. The family which God seeks to create around 
him is one of harmony because of the holiness and 
obedience of its members. The invasion of unremedied 
sin would turn the home of God's chosen children into 
a scene of anarchy. Law, the law of obedience, the 
law of holiness, and this law forever insisted upon, is 
one of the most perfect expressions of the Father's 
beneficence. This is a condition which forever underlies 
the safety and the happiness of the moral universe. 
This condition the Father's love ever addresses for their 
approval and acceptance to his sons and daughters. 
But this all means that God's sovereignty is always 
exercised in the interests of his children, of their char- 
acter and welfare, and never as despotic will. 

It is this relation of Fatherhood which gives to sin 
its most hateful and forbidding aspect. Sin is not simply 
a defiance of law, it is a crime against love. It is the 
alienation of a child against the parental heart, the 
rebellion of a life against the most perfect good that 
infinite love can plan for that life. Sin is the great 
perversion ; it is in its very nature unreasonable, ungrate- 
ful, hateful. It is the reign of alienation in a heart 
made for love; it is the thwarting of the holiest ideals 
of Fatherhood. 

I have said that it is the very nature of Fatherhood 
to redeem. God could never suffer his child to fall 



1 66 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

under any doom of sin without first investing all divine 
resources to rescue one so imperiled. But, from a dif- 
ferent point of view, atonement itself springs from the 
very heart of Fatherhood. The cross of Christ is the 
most vivid picture and portrayal to us of God's thought 
of sin, of the Father's pity for the child whom sin vic- 
timizes and imperils. It shows at once both God's 
hatred of sin and the sacrifice which his love is willing 
to make to save the sinner. "God so loved the world, 
that he gave his only begotten Son." "Christ suffered 
death upon the cross for our sins." With the thought 
of Fatherhood ever before us, of one thing we may be 
sure: there was no suffering on the part of Christ which 
did not equally pierce the heart of the Father. In 
some dreadful way sin necessitated the cross. The 
cross was a tragedy in the divine heart, an event whose 
meaning in our most tender and luminous moods we 
shall never begin to fathom. Sin nowhere can appear 
so malignant, so deadly depraved, such a treason against 
all goodness, as when seen in the light of the cross. 
To save his child from this malign and damning thing 
the Father's love stops not short of supreme sacrifice. 
The heart that can thrill with the vision of the cross 
must at the same time shudder at the enormity of the 
thing which made the cross a necessity. It is also true 
that nowhere else is there furnished such a vision of 
the Father's love. As we think of Christ in the hours 
when he passed from Gethsemane to Calvary, the spectac- 
ular scene helps us to some vivid and sympathetic 
appreciation of his human suffering. Even so, our most 
perfect view is superficial. The deeper meaning of the 
tragedy not even the angels can look into. But in 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 167 

the heart of God, the Father, far removed from all 
visible or phenomenal expression, this tragedy to its 
deepest pang was enacted. And what was the purpose 
of it all ? That in some way the infinite love of a Divine 
Father might save his child from the death of sin. If 
there is any vision of God's love that can melt the sinner's 
heart into penitent contrition, that certainly is the 
vision in the center of which is the cross. 

Fatherhood is the secret of the Incarnation. God 
must reveal himself to his sons and daughters. For 
this purpose he can meet our limitations in no way so 
effectively as by coming to us in the person of Jesus 
the Christ. In Christ, God the Father concretes himself 
upon our human vision. If we have seen Christ we 
have seen the Father. If we know the heart of Christ 
we know the heart of God. But it is equally true that 
the Father has incarnated in the life of his Son the 
perfect ideal of what he would have his human children 
to become. Christ in his human life is the beloved 
Son in whom the Father is ever well pleased. And so, 
with Christ before our vision, we can never go far astray 
in our knowledge as to what we ought to be that we 
may be approved as the sons of God. And this is the 
real significance of the increasing exaltation which Christ 
is receiving in human history. God in this way is lifting 
his incarnate Son more and more into the gaze of hu- 
manity. It is not the son of a Nazarene carpenter, 
not the humble child of obscure Judean peasants, who 
is being thus exalted. It is for no less a person than 
his own Son that God is to-day so subsidizing the forces 
of history, of literature, and of worship. It is the living 
miracle of history that Jesus Christ is to-day more and 



i68 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

more drawing to himself the attention of mankind. 
The growing exaltation of Christ in the thought of all 
nations, and especially at the end of nineteen centuries, 
from the humble conditions of his birth, cannot be 
accounted for on any hypothesis less than that of his 
divine Sonship. His fame is peerless and unapproached 
by any other child of the race. God hath exalted and 
hath given him a name that is above every name, be- 
cause he as no other is the revelation of the divine Father- 
hood, as also of that sonship to which God through him 
would win all the children of men. 

But when searched from every standpoint we shall 
only the more fully discover that the Fatherhood of 
God is the all-significant fact in the revelation of Jesus 
Christ. It is the one ground on which rests the greatest 
of the commandments. We are commanded to love 
God with all our being. But we cannot love a Deity 
who is simply a creator, a governor, or a judge. Love 
only can beget love. It is possible for us to love God 
with all our hearts only because as a Father he has 
loved us with an unmeasured love. And so, in the 
entire range of his revelation every expression, every 
overture, of God to men proceeds from the fountain of 
his Fatherhood. And every demand which God makes 
upon human life is for the fulfillment of duty owed to 
him. All the duties of love, of faith, of honesty, of 
purity, of forgiveness, of prayer, of worship, of service, 
we owe because God is our Father. The life of a child 
of God is perfect only as it is perfect in the possession 
and manifestation of the filial spirit. 

The Fatherhood of God carries in itself all the rela- 
tions and destinies of his kingdom in the earth. The 



GROWTH OF INTERPRETATION 169 

Fatherhood of God means the brotherhood of man with 
all of its far-reaching implications and burdens of respon- 
sibility. The kingdom of God on earth will be realized 
only in just the measure in which the divine brother- 
hood is actualized. The plain putting of this truth may 
seem to many startling and chimerical. But we may 
remember that we are only at the first end of God's 
plans for his world. The human brotherhood will be 
perfectly, beautifully realized, and it will be realized 
through the instrumentality of men, increasingly multi- 
plying men, who in themselves shall develop for humanity 
the spirit and the service which was in Jesus Christ. 
God's plans for this world are larger than we know. 
A light too effulgent for our present vision will yet 
rest upon the earth. God is not discouraged; we must 
not be. He will not fail. 

It need not be disguised that the modern emphasis 
of God's Fatherhood has greatly modified methods and 
conceptions of pulpit ministrations. This was inevitable. 
Treatments of themes which were formerly greatly 
effective are no longer tolerated. The preacher who is 
steeped in traditional methods, and who has failed to 
keep himself intellectually in sympathy with modern 
scholarship, is having a hard time. He is very likely 
to be sincere, pious, and possibly ardent; and these 
qualities count for much. But such a man is hopelessly 
out of touch with the deeper thinking and feeling of 
the age. As a teacher he cannot command a following 
from the young and alert intellect of the times. He 
is himself oppressed with the mystery of the situation. 
He is tempted to be a pessimist. He feels that spirit- 
ually the times are out of joint, when the real trouble 



170 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

is that he has anchored himself in both thought and 
mood to phases which the world has outgrown. Not 
a few of the old type of traveling evangelists whose 
appeals in former days swayed multitudes have, because 
of a change in the intellectual atmosphere which they 
have not appreciated, found themselves bereft of both 
their power and their calling. They do not know what 
has happened. Still traveling about with their stock of 
stereotyped sermons in their carpetbags, they are vapid 
enough to accredit "higher criticism" with having carried 
the Church and the age out of range of the "pure gospel." 
These are the men who, on a par with Mrs. Partington 
attempting to keep back the Atlantic Ocean with her 
broom, would like to arrest the progress of free investi- 
gation in our higher institutions of learning. 

It may be that the modern pulpit often fails in right 
emphasis, but, if so, it is not the fault of the richer 
gospel of the present which the pulpit is commissioned 
to preach. No pulpit since Pentecost has had at com- 
mand such a wealth of inspired truth, so rich a gospel 
of good tidings to a needy world, as that which in these 
very days is awaiting utterance from the intellectually 
equipped and the spiritually baptized preacher. 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 



»7' 



The Kingdom is a growth, both in our understanding of it and in 
its realization. Our Lord spoke of it as a leaven, which was gradually 
to leaven the lump. Again, he described it as a seed, which should 
grow up, first the blade, then the ear, and after that the full corn in 
the ear. And he even spoke of our knowledge of it as something to 
be slowly gained under the tuition of the Holy Spirit, whom he would 
send to guide his disciples into the truth. He brought the leaven, 
he planted the seed, he spoke the word; but the evolution and the 
understanding were committed to the ages. — Professor Borden P. 
Bowne. 

If there be a real climax to the long history of nature, then it 
surely must needs be that no part of the long chain of process that 
leads to this consummation can be without meaning. Logical co- 
herence compels us to suppose that the whole natural order is an 
immense system of final causes converging at last upon one Supreme 
End, the "one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." 
It is toward this end that law must be working, the ocean currents 
flowing, the mists rising and falling, the strata being piled mountain- 
high, and human life being lavished by land and sea. All roads of 
Nature at last converge upon some Mother City of Man. — D. S. 
Cairns. 



172 



CHAPTER XI 
THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 

In the matchless prayer which our Lord taught his 
disciples the first utterance is an ascription to the Father, 
a petition that his name may be hallowed among men. 
The next is the petition that God's kingdom may come, 
and that his will may be done on earth as in heaven. 
The term " kingdom" is one which Christ habitually used 
to designate the distinctive community or society for 
the creation of which he himself came into the world. 
The phrases "kingdom of God " "kingdom of heaven," 
or "my kingdom," as used almost solely by Christ, 
appear in the Gospels no less than one hundred and 
twelve times, while the term "Church" is recorded to 
have fallen from his lips in but two instances. It is 
evident that in Christ's thought the kingdom and the 
Church were not synonymous terms. The Church, how- 
ever important its mission, is but one of the agencies 
of the kingdom. 

Christ's conception of the kingdom is no less than that 
of a new moral order for the world, a universal empire 
of humanity in which shall be actualized the Fatherhood 
of God and the brotherhood of man. The phrase "king- 
dom of heaven" has been much treated in sermons and 
in Christian literature as though it related solely to a 
supramundane life, the life of a heavenly hereafter. 
It is doubtless sometimes used to express the translated 
and the celestial estate into which Christ's perfected 
kingdom shall ultimately eventuate. But the great 

173 



174 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

burden and stress of the term as it fell from Christ's 
lips had reference solely to God's purposes and work 
as relating to this human world. 

In accepting this view we must hold ourselves ever 
mindful of the fact that, whatever this conception in- 
volves as to the meaning of the kingdom, it is a conception 
that adjusts itself to human and mundane conditions. 
The kingdom thus conceived is not identical either in 
development or environment with that of the final and 
heavenly estate. The kingdom on earth when most 
perfectly developed will still be composed of citizens of 
human limitations. Knowledge will be imperfect, char- 
acter in many cases will be immature, and it is quite 
conceivable that dispositions alien to the kingdom may 
persist in exceptional instances. But the kingdom on 
earth as conceived by Christ certainly does involve the 
most ideal conditions possible in a mortal world. 

It would seem that for obvious reasons Christ pru- 
dentially withheld himself from a certain kind of utter- 
ance concerning his kingdom in the world. It would 
have been most easy, had he yielded to the temptation, 
for him to incite the spirit of insurrection against 
Roman rule among the Judean populations. This people 
continually chafed under foreign dominion, and would 
have been but too ready to summon a popular idol 
to lead them in throwing off the hated yoke. But such 
a move as this, even though it could have succeeded, 
would have been utterly aside from, as well as vastly 
damaging to, Christ's real mission. It was infinitely 
far from Christ's purpose to excite, upon the one hand, 
the spirit of popular revolt, or, upon the other hand, 
to utter any word or perform any act by which he could 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 175 

justly be construed as personally hostile to the ruling 
powers. Much, therefore, of his utterance pertaining to 
the kingdom was veiled in apocalyptic forms. 

Christ doubtless did seek to impress his disciples not 
only with the paramount importance of the society 
which he termed "my kingdom," but he sought also to 
impress them with its supreme worth and attractiveness 
as compared with all earthly dominions. In order to 
become citizens of this kingdom, they, if needs be, could 
afford to forego all earthly good, to endure the most 
fearful persecutions, and to count it all joy. In the 
period preceding his crucifixion, and after he had an- 
nounced his death, while he always spoke with the 
fullest confidence of the triumph of his cause, he also 
frequently intimated that after his death he must return 
again for the completion of his kingdom in the earth. 
There can be no doubt that the early disciples were 
thoroughly imbued with the conviction of Christ's early 
bodily return to earth, and with the expectation that 
in a most spectacular way he would visibly set up his 
kingdom among men. Saint Paul was very fully pre- 
possessed with this idea, and he even expressed the 
hope that he might himself live to witness his Lord's 
coming. 

We are forced to conclude that this conviction, in 
the form in which it was held by the early Church, 
was a mistake. It was owing not simply to a popular, 
but to an apostolic, misconstruction of the things which 
Christ himself had said. So far as may be seen, we 
are not required to assume that any inspiration which 
the apostolical writers possessed would necessarily guard 
either them or the Church against such mistaken infer- 



176 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

ence. In the meantime, there can be no doubt that 
this view of the early Church concerning Christ's speedy 
second coming did serve very important ends. It kept 
the faith and the patience of the Church firm and steady 
through stress of storm and trial. These early Christians 
lived in a most difficult environment. The world around 
them was rampant in wickedness and oppression. The 
man of sin stood over against them powerful, defiant, 
cruel, ruthless. But the Christians said: "We can 
endure. We serve a King who will soon appear in 
majesty to stamp out this wickedness, and to cast his 
enemies into the dust. The night may be bitter, but 
it is brief. We can be patient, for when he comes we 
shall be sharers in his triumph and in his glory/ ' 

It is not my purpose here to attempt any critical 
analysis of the New Testament teaching concerning 
Christ's second coming. This teaching, as confessedly 
acknowledged by the most expert exegetes, is fraught 
with difficulties. I must believe, however, whatever 
ulterior meanings in some cases Christ's utterances con- 
cerning his second coming may legitimately carry, that 
the great body of these utterances have from Pentecost 
to the present time been receiving their steady fulfill- 
ment. Christ, through the Spirit, has been continuously 
in the world building his kingdom among men. The 
processes of this kingdom are not with demonstration; 
they are not of that spectacular order which the early 
disciples, because of their Jewish conceptions and anticipa- 
tions, would most naturally have expected. But the 
kingdom which Christ through the centuries is quietly 
building carries in itself a real glory unpictured by its 
most inspired descriptions. Its real values transcend 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 177 

immeasurably the best forecasts of its prophets and 
apostles. It is a kingdom which puts all earthly rule 
under a shadow, because it is the kingdom of God among 
men. Measured by time, it may now be but in its 
beginnings, but, if so, it is surely, steadily working 
toward that 

"One far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves." 

The conceptions furnished by science, cosmogony, 
geology, evolution help to poise and calm us with a 
large philosophy as to God's purposes and methods with 
this world. One thing seems certain, God has taken 
abundant time to prepare the earth for man's advent. 
The evidence seems to indicate that man himself, in 
his first coming as compared with his higher possibilities, 
was but a rudimentary being. The inference would seem 
reasonable that if God could take myriad ages in which 
to prepare this world for man's citizenship, then he 
might well take unlimited time to perfect the being for 
whom such a world was so patiently made ready. And 
so it may be true that 

"If twenty million of summers are stored in the sunlight still, 
We are far from the noon of man, there is time for the race to grow." 

We shall think sanely, inspiringly, of Christ's king- 
dom, the kingdom now building, when we conceive of 
it as realizing the goal of all divine purposes for this 
world. This goal has been pictured, inadequately but 
impressively, as "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming 
down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband." It is pictured as a country 
in which God dwells with his people, where all tears 
are wiped away, and there is no more death, neither 



178 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for these former 
things are passed away. In this country there is no 
temple which screens God from the vision of his people, 
for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple 
thereof. "And the city hath no need of the sun, neither 
of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God is present, 
and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations 
of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: 
and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and 
honor into it. And there shall in no wise enter into 
it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh 
abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are writ- 
ten in the Lamb's book of life." 

This picture is born of an inspired dream. It is 
characterized by limitations of Judaic thought, colored 
by Judaic imagery. It is, therefore, provincial and 
inadequate to its real subject. But in spirit it is true. 
It thrills and glows with a far-off glory of Christ's per- 
fected kingdom in the earth. 

We must now ask, What are the agencies and what 
the methods through which Christ's kingdom is to be 
developed? The moment when Christ, in response to 
their request, gave to his disciples a model prayer must 
have been one of great significance. Is there anything 
in this prayer which may help to guide our thought? 
The petition is for the coming of the kingdom. This 
petition seems to be inseparably bound up with the 
ideal that when the kingdom shall really come the will 
of God will then be done by men on earth even as it is 
now done by the unsinning citizens of heaven. A very 
first condition of the kingdom, then, is the filial human 
heart, the enthronement in the individual bosom of a 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 179 

will whose outgoings toward God are those of obedience 
and love. And this condition cannot be overemphasized. 
It must be said that the initial and vital fact upon 
which Jesus confidently and fearlessly rests all his hopes 
for the future welfare of human society is in the char- 
acter and conduct of the regenerated individual. The 
interior soul made luminous, hopeful, and strong with 
his own indwelling life is the single center from which 
he proposes to construct all his kingdom of righteous- 
ness, purity, good will, and happiness among men. 
The constructive forces of his kingdom do not primarily 
arise from outward environment nor from material 
conditions. They proceed from within outward. Social- 
ism emphasizes environment. Its logic, when reduced 
to the last analysis, is, give a man good surroundings, 
endow him with material plenty, and his life will be 
right. Experience is far from confirming the soundness 
of this philosophy. Multitudes of men in the best 
material environment have developed gross and infamous 
lives. Not that a proper stress may not be laid upon 
the quality of material environment. There are environ- 
ments in which it would be impossible to develop valuable 
character, surroundings that brutalize life, and in whose 
sodden atmosphere no beautiful thing can grow. It 
will be a part of the important mission of the kingdom 
to make impossible foul habitations. But, while Christ 
is not indifferent to environment, his method is, through 
personal regeneration of character, to create the forces 
in the soul which shall make it impossible for men to 
tolerate, or to continue in, an environment which bru- 
talizes. Regenerated lives are creative; they cannot rest 
satisfied with depraved or insanitary surroundings. The 



180 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

real constructive forces of Christ's kingdom, then, are 
born within and projected from hearts which have been 
transformed by the Spirit of God. On such hearts 
Christ conditions absolutely the moral and social recon- 
struction of the world. This program reviewed simply 
from the standpoint of human wisdom may seem both 
radical and impracticable. But, if so, it is the radicalism 
of Jesus Christ, and he makes no mistakes. 

The fatal hindrance to the incoming of Christ's king- 
dom is alienated human wills — wills which not only do 
not seek to realize the will of God, but which habituate 
themselves in doing that which God forbids. It is evi- 
dent that over such wills the kingdom cannot reign. 
The exorcising from the individual will of the spirit 
of alienation toward, of disharmony with, God is clearly, 
then, an indispensable condition for the coming of the 
kingdom into the individual life. But the individual, 
though but a unit in, stands vitally related to, the 
social compact. Society is the relationship in which not 
only the individual develops mostly his significance and 
values, but it furnishes also the sphere of his personal 
influence, the sphere in which his character and conduct 
tell for good or evil upon the lives of others about him. 
This is the philosophy of the kingdom — the leaven of 
righteous character working in the meal of society. 
The ideal citizen of the kingdom is no neutral or inactive 
force. He must be in himself a fountain of Christlike 
sympathies, a battery of moral energy, an active doer 
of the will of God among men. Having himself come 
under the dominion of the kingdom, he must seek to 
win others to the same rule. It is by this process that 
the kingdom is to widen among men. 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 181 

But, given the filial heart and will, still very much 
will depend upon the conception under which the builder 
shall do his work. It is of the utmost importance that 
the worker shall intelligently apprehend the divine will. 
For high service it is not enough to be willing; it is 
necessary to be intelligent. It is vastly important to 
the efficiency of the worker that in addition to the 
spirit of consecration he shall have some inspiring meas- 
urement of his opportunity, of the field of his action 
and responsibility. The poverty of the Church has 
often been the poverty of its ideals. In general, it 
may be said that the largeness of God's thought for 
the world has dawned most slowly even upon the Chris- 
tian mind. Men of conscience and of power have pro- 
moted the infamy of the Inquisition, and have condemned 
to martyrdom honest and heroic thinkers apparently on 
the ground that a man's intellectual attitude toward 
dogma is in the sight of God more important than the 
moral state of his heart. The ultra-Romanist has sin- 
cerely believed that outside of his Church there is no 
salvation. The small Churchman has insisted that 
Christ has no validly ordained ministers save such as 
have come to their function through the viaduct of the 
apostolical succession — itself an absurd fable construed 
as history. From some quarters it might be inferred 
that the Christian Church is largely a matter of priestly 
orders, of ministerial uniform, of ritual and of ceremony, 
an institution in which the highest court etiquette is 
of saving importance. 

It is a most sad thing to discover how out of per- 
spective with the largeness of divine Fatherhood has 
been very much of so-called Christian thinking. There 



1 82 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

has been a great deal of devotion that has been accom- 
panied with poor ideals, ideals that have been hard, 
narrow, bearing little or no likeness to the spirit of 
Christ. Poor conceptions of the nature and mission of 
the kingdom cannot mean other than defective or mis- 
directed service. Zeal and ignorance are an unsafe 
partnership. 

The ideal of the kingdom is divine. It is so large as 
not to be shut within the boundaries of family, clan, 
nationality, race, or any ecclesiasticism. It embraces in 
its beneficent purpose the entire human race. The ideal 
worker in and for this kingdom is the man who not 
only sincerely wills to do the will of God, but whose 
own intelligence most clearly and broadly grasps the 
divine thought of the kingdom itself. In a strict, but 
correct, sense it must be seen that the working forces 
of the kingdom are neither other-worldly nor imprac- 
ticable. God's plans fit into the order of man's physical, 
social, and intellectual necessities. They lie on the 
plane of an industrial and working humanity. It is to 
be noted that, while Christ summoned men to his dis- 
cipleship, it was not his rule to separate them from 
their industrial callings. Simon and his brethren were 
fishermen when Christ first met them, and at the time of 
his last recorded meeting with them they were still fisher- 
men. So it is not in the nature or purpose of the kingdom 
to lessen the volume of the world's industries, to curtail 
legitimate trade, nor to withdraw incentive from in- 
ventive ingenuity. Under the kingdom agriculture, trade, 
commerce, invention, literature, art, science, learning, 
government, institutions promotive of human good, the 
increasing annexation and conversion of nature's forces 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 183 

to human uses — all will proceed normally, only with 
accelerated pace because conducted under bettered con- 
ditions. It will be through these very instrumentalities 
that the kingdom itself will largely manifest its per- 
fections and yield its beneficent fruitage. We must, then, 
divest ourselves of all ideas of any inadaptation of 
Christ's kingdom to this mundane life. The ghostly idea 
that Christian character can best flourish in separation 
from the world and its activities has long haunted Chris- 
tian thought. But the idea itself is wholly un-Christian. 
The kingdom is to come to its final perfection by utilizing 
the natural resources of the earth, and by working the 
machinery of the industrial and social organisms. 

One of the most important qualifications of the individ- 
ual worker is that he be inspired with a sense of the 
divinity of service. When to right will and intelligence 
there is added the spirit of supreme consecration to the 
interests of the kingdom we have reached the conditions 
of the ideal worker. The greatest emphasis is often 
that of paradox. This is the method by which Christ 
emphasized his abhorrence of the selfish, the self-centered 
life: "He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that 
loseth his life for my sake shall find it." "Whosoever 
will be great among you, let him be your minister; and 
whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your 
servant.' ' It was to such a policy of life that Christ 
utterly gave himself. This philosophy is a stumbling- 
block and foolishness to the selfish mind; but it is a 
philosophy which has won the lasting plaudits of man- 
kind. Christ, who most literally and finally gave himself, 
has awakened the undying enthusiasms of the centuries. 
And if we search history for the roster of names most 



i8 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

sacredly enthroned in the love of the race, we shall 
find them not among the powerful, the rich, or the 
selfish, but among those who have given themselves in 
unselfish and exalted service for mankind, among those 
who have shown the spirit of splendid sacrifice in behalf 
of their fellows. 

And this but illustrates the divine law of compen- 
sation. He that gives shall receive, he that loses his 
life shall find it again. He who in most perfect self- 
forgetfulness gives himself for the service of humanity 
shall come to glorious resurrection and transfiguration 
in the fruits and triumphs of the kingdom itself. In 
relation to this great principle much of the teaching 
in practice of the Christian Church has been poor and 
barren. An enormous emphasis has been laid upon the 
importance of securing one's individual salvation, but 
the divine spirit of service for others in which the, soul 
shall find its own largest development, and finally be 
most secure in the matter of its own salvation, has 
been largely lost sight of. It is prophetic of the larger 
place which the kingdom has reached in the common 
Christian intelligence that now so clear an emphasis is 
laid upon the importance of saving the community as 
well as the individual soul. 

The law of service is measured by stewardship. No 
man is his own master, but must live as one who is to 
render an account of every investment which he makes 
of his Lord's treasure. The law of stewardship applies 
to every life and to every talent. Gifts for service vary 
as widely as the aptitudes and possessions of men; but 
under the law of the kingdom each man is responsible 
for the best investment of all his powers. No man has 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 185 

a right to bury his talent. It may be that a majority 
of men are of the one-talent order, but, if so, these are 
under as supreme obligation to put their capital to 
service as though they were the directors of empires. 
Every possession that may be utilized for advancing 
the weal of society is by so much a measure of the moral 
responsibility of its holder. And there are no two 
standards of stewardship. A vicious method of thinking 
has assigned to the saint one and to the sinner another 
standard of obligation for the use of gifts. It has been 
common to assume that the Christian minister, by 
virtue of his calling, may be justly held to one standard 
of conduct, while his neighbor who makes no profession 
may be freely excused in the doing of that for which 
the minister would be condemned. The kingdom knows 
no such double standard. Every man alike is held 
responsible for living on the fore-edge of his best light. 
There are not two spheres in the kingdom, the one 
spiritual, the other profane. The kind of distinction 
which has been much capitalized in the interest of selfish 
motives, of a sacred and a profane order in the world, 
and both legitimate, is one which the kingdom does not 
recognize. Its very assumption is an intellectual blas- 
phemy. The standards of the kingdom are made for 
only one world, and this God's world. 

Stewardship, then, is the measurement of the law 
under which every man is held divinely responsible for 
investing all his powers for the good of the world. The 
preacher in his place is to do his utmost to magnify 
the gospel of his Master. All professions in command 
of exceptional resources must direct these resources to 
the highest ends of moral service. The men of trade 



1 86 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

must acquire the secret of equitable methods, methods 
that shall deal honestly and helpfully to the world 
which they serve. 

In most definite and stressful teaching Christ makes 
it appear that there is no source of power to which 
the law of the kingdom more exactingly or critically 
applies than for the moral uses of wealth. It would be 
folly to assume that Christ had any innate or acquired 
prejudice against wealth in itself considered. We know 
that many of his personal friends were possessors of 
wealth. He was a frequent guest in the homes of the 
rich. He lived altogether on too high a plane to permit 
him to judge of the worth of men from either their 
possession of or lack of riches. But no moral teacher 
was ever so clear and emphatic in his warnings against 
the dangers and the perversions of wealth as was Jesus 
the Christ. Indeed, some of Christ's utterances con- 
cerning wealth are of such a character that they could 
easily be used as rallying texts for the most radical 
socialist. He says: "How hardly shall they that have 
riches enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for 
a camel to go through the eye of a needle." He bids 
men beware of the deceitfulness of riches. This deceit- 
fulness is a thing that chokes the word of life out of 
the soul, and makes character spiritually and morally 
barren. There is probably no process more subtle 
than that by which the love of money steals its march 
upon the soul, engrossing and enslaving the life. Men 
become victims of its degradation without being con- 
scious of its bondage. Francis of Assisi said that he had 
in the confessional received acknowledgment of all 
kinds of sin, but never once a confession revealing a 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 187 

consciousness of covetousness. The deceitfulness of riches 
is something so alluringly fatal that its most hopeless 
victims seem never to know of its presence. Yet the 
man who is prosperous and rich, and who at the same 
time is forgetful of the higher interests of life, is one 
whom Christ brands as a fool. One of the most scathing 
parables which fell from his lips is that which describes 
the rich man who finally lifted up his eyes in hopeless 
torment because during his lifetime he had forgotten to 
discharge the social obligations of his wealth. An im- 
pressive scene is that in which the young man of clean 
habits, of outwardly respectable life, and who doubtless 
felt in his soul a yearning for higher things, yet went 
away hopeless and sorrowful because under Christ's 
illuminating test he had been made to see that in his 
soul a love of wealth was a passion above that for all 
better values. Christ did not condemn wealth, but it 
is certain that against no perils of the soul did he utter 
more vivid warnings than against the dangers of riches 
to their possessors. 

I am well aware that many rich men deceive them- 
selves by the belief that their investments in the world 
of trade prove a serviceable distribution of money. 
This indeed is true. No man can invest his means with- 
out putting his wealth into general circulation and thereby 
benefiting, it may be in a large way, the world of trade. But 
it is not in this sense in which Christ holds the rich man 
responsible for the uses of his wealth. This kind of in- 
vestment may all be conducted upon the most selfish plane. 
It is simply receiving in return that for which investment 
is made. The kingdom holds wealth responsible for moral 
and benevolent, for unselfish, service to mankind. 



1 88 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

It is good evidence of the growing rule of Christian 
sentiment among men that the best thought of the 
present age gives full approval of Christ's view as to 
the moral uses of wealth. This is often called a material- 
istic age. Wealth as a gross element doubtless too 
much influences social thinking. It is an element of 
power by which often its possessor commands influence 
and standing to which his intrinsic character would 
in no way entitle him. But, nevertheless, the feeling 
is increasingly general that it is something discreditable 
for a rich man not to be a real benefactor of his age. 
Riches in this day are so common that they may be 
literally considered vulgar unless marked by devotion 
to high service. One of the most noted capitalists and 
philanthropists of the age is author of the famous state- 
ment, "He who dies rich dies disgraced." The daily 
press, not overmuch given to moral lecturing, not infre- 
quently takes occasion to voice the popular surprise 
and disapproval when a rich man dies and leaves nothing 
to benevolence. The miser has always been despicable. 
The man who is so enslaved by the love of money, who 
makes the dollar his standard of value for both men 
and things sold in the market, who successfully usurps 
the machinery of modern trade to add to his greedy 
hoards, yet who goes through life steeling his own heart 
against the spirit of benevolence, and turning a deaf 
ear to the cries for service which rise to him on every 
hand — this man awakens an intense but mixed feeling 
in the moral community. Some look upon him with 
pity, others with contempt, all with disapproval. Such 
a man is a misplacement under all high moral standards. 
Commanding enormous power to serve, he is untrue to 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 189 

his stewardship. Between him and the real spirit of 
the kingdom there is still the difficult passage of the 
needle's eye. 

Money is not in itself an evil. Whatever severity 
of emphasis Christ may have put upon the perils of 
wealth, he gives it a place of high value in the service 
of his kingdom. Under the law of the kingdom all gifts 
come to perfection in the measure of their devotion 
to service. 

In the distribution of endowments God has just as 
certainly given to some men aptitudes for business as 
to others talent for poetry, for music, or for eloquence. 
A man's calling should be sacred. It is the sphere 
which furnishes him at once the opportunity and the 
implements for service. The man w r ho has a talent 
for making an honest fortune, a fortune whose processes 
are not destructive but constructive of the interests of 
society, and who conscientiously uses this fortune as 
a steward of the kingdom, is one whom God has ordained 
for great honors. The kingdom has increasing need of 
such men. They belong to the elect nobility of God's sons. 

A catalogue of the institutions which are to serve 
in building the kingdom must include all agencies which 
conserve, or contribute to, human weal. The family 
is God's first and most sacred nursery and training 
school of citizenship. The Church is a great university 
for spiritual teaching and moral nurture. It is vastly 
endowed and equipped for inspiring the world with the 
high ideals of the kingdom. It is the one institution 
whose distinctive mission it is to evangelize the world. 
But the Church, great as is its mission, is but one of 
the agencies of the kingdom. The school, the press, 



i 9 o MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

legislation, the courts of law, benevolent institutions, 
are all to be taken possession of and conducted in the 
spirit and in the interests of the kingdom. Art, science, 
the entire machinery of business, everything that con- 
tributes to the betterment of human life — all is to be 
under moral direction and control. This means that 
from human society vicious traffics, amusements that 
debase, organized evil, environments that brutalize, are 
to be eliminated; that the earth through enlightenment, 
through applied science and art, is to be evolved as 
a fit physical habitation for the sons of God. This 
means the best sanitary conditions and a minimum of 
disease, the most perfect productiveness of nature, the 
carrying of the heavy burdens of human drudgery 
and of the world's industries by natural forces, the 
releasing to the worker of such plenty and leisure as 
may be essential to his best development. So far as 
human society is concerned, it will be the realization 
of a true theocracy, the fulfillment of the vision of the 
Revelator, of a new heaven and a new earth in which 
dwelleth righteousness. 

Such are some of the indicators of the kingdom which 
Christ came to erect in the earth. And is it all a vision- 
ary dream ? Not so. There has been much discussion — 
probably most of it very unintelligent — as to the unrecon- 
cilable differences between science and the Christian 
faith. But in the great ends toward which they both 
look there would seem to be a most significant harmony. 
Evolution works toward a consummate race living in 
a world transformed by science. Christian faith looks 
toward a kingdom of righteousness into whose perfection 
are wrought all the finished products of industry, of 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY igi 

science, of art, of invention. The prophetic goal of 
both science and faith is a perfected humanity. 

That enormous obstacles, obstacles of a seemingly 
insuperable character, stand in the way of this realiza- 
tion, cannot be ignored. One truth which needs to 
be domesticated in universal conviction is Christ's view 
of the worth of man as man. Christ habitually treated 
human nature with a reverence due to divinity. This 
was doubtless owing to his clear view of the infinite 
possibilities of the human soul. Much of Christ's active 
ministry was passed among the very poor and often 
among the most forlorn in the social communities. But 
he always treated the poor, the ignorant, those on the 
very rim of society, with a consideration which could 
only be born of a divine view of man's worth. He 
had that far vision of the soul's possibilities which made 
him feel always in the presence of human nature, however 
garbed in poverty or uninspiring its environments, 
that he was dealing with something of divine and in- 
finite values. 

In the Louvre of Paris is a picture by Murillo, "The 
Miracle of San Diego." The figures are of life size. 
Through an open door two noblemen and a priest enter 
a kitchen. To their amazement they find that all 
the maids are angels, dividing between themselves the 
work of the place. It is a parable in art of the divinity 
of the common toiler. These persons discharging a 
work rated as drudgery are themselves radiant with 
divine kinship, and under their hands life's daily toil 
itself is glorified. This Christlike conception as thus 
pictured on Murillo 's canvas needs universal acceptance 
as a vital condition of the kingdom itself. 



i 9 2 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Prevalence of this view would go far toward settling 
all discords which now disturb the peace of the world. 
If the rich and the poor were to meet each other on 
the high plane of this conviction that they are brothers 
in immortality, peers in the inheritances of God's chil- 
dren, there could not long persist a warfare between 
capital and labor, there could continue no invidious 
distinctions in society. Men would no longer be esti- 
mated by the mere accidents or incidents of fortune, 
but on the basis of moral character. 

In any large thought of the kingdom it cannot be 
forgotten that very much of the world is still in its 
intellectual and moral infancy. There are inferior races 
which are not only not in the procession, but they are 
hardly aware of the march of modern civilization. Among 
all these the leaven of the kingdom must work. Wher- 
ever man exists with possibilities of spiritual life and 
of moral growth, there is a candidate for citizenship 
in the kingdom. The mission of the kingdom will, 
and can, never be completed until its seed has been 
richly sown in every soil of humanity. When Christ's 
view of human worth shall take its rightful place in 
the convictions of the educated and powerful nations, 
then these nations will become missionary in their 
spirit, and trade and commerce will be allies with the 
moral and educational forces which shall work for the 
reclamation and uplift of all the outlying and unpriv- 
ileged families of mankind. The vision of leaders in 
the kingdom must be inspired with the largeness and 
completeness of God's purposes for the entire world. 

The noontide glories of the kingdom may be far or 
near. Be this as it may, before its coming the tempers 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 193 

of the gospel must be enthroned in human society. 
In the great world of trade, now so vitiated by motives 
of piracy, an enlightened sense of equity must sub- 
stitute all spirit of destructive rivalry. In the industrial 
world ideals of manhood, and not lust of gold, must 
be in control. God is dealing with this world for the 
purpose of developing a race of Godlike men. Before 
the kingdom can have sway all industries and business 
must subordinate themselves to this divine ideal. The 
ideals of the world must so far change as to place man- 
hood everywhere, let it appear in whatsoever guise, at 
high premium over all things else. There may not 
then be less labor than now. Labor, so far from being 
a curse, is wellnigh God's one condition, and will always 
remain so, to the highest reach of soul. Masterful 
faculty, faculty which sways with force, has always 
developed the thews of its victory in overcoming diffi- 
culties and in capturing achievements on toilsome path- 
ways. Indeed, I am unable to think of any heaven 
hereafter where the highest possibilities of the saint, 
the sublimest reach into Godlike character, will not 
forever be dependent upon faculties which shall be put 
into active and ceaseless stretch for attainment. 

This world, then, when lifted to the highest plane, 
will always demand the laboring hand and the toiling 
brain. And, while the perfection of invention shall be 
such as to redeem labor largely from its menial features, 
there will always be grades of work some of which may 
not in themselves be as congenial as other grades. Needed 
service, however, of any order under the standards of 
the kingdom will be translated to a place of honor. 
In the day when Christian ideals prevail manhood will 



194 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

be the highest and most valued thing on the earth. 
In that day men will not be graded by the kind of work 
they do, but by the kind of men they are. The passion 
for humanity, God's humanity, will be such that legis- 
lation, law, education, and all the forces that mold 
the commonwealth, will be in conspiracy to guard the 
pathway of every child born into the world with the 
highest conditions and ministries of life. 

The bringing of the kingdom will demand great moral 
leadership. Every uplifting departure of the race, every 
new moral epoch, has arrived under the ordained leader- 
ship of the providential man. As a condition for the 
coming of the kingdom there will be no greater need 
than for prophetic men, a type of men that cannot 
spring either from the spirit of sodden and depressed 
labor nor from the mammon-blinded ranks of selfish 
wealth. The leader for the future must be a man in- 
spired with God's own vision, one who comes to his 
mission as from the presence of burning bush or of 
transfiguring glories. 

It may be truly said that never were the prophetic 
conditions of the kingdom so visibly present or of such 
manifest purport as now. Never before in the vast 
ferment of human thought was there such a leaven of 
Christian ideas as to-day. Never was there such a 
challenge from the popular conscience against organized 
wrong, never such a call for a sense of moral steward- 
ship for the uses of wealth. This age not only witnesses 
and welcomes unparalleled benevolences, but it accentu- 
ates as no other the necessity for justice to all men. 
Christian ethical and altruistic ideas, as never before, 
like a searching sea tide, are pressing on all the shore 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 195 

lines of the world's thinking. To the observer who has 
capacity to brush the mists of the night from his eye- 
lashes, the tops of the mountains round about are agleam 
with the light of divine promise for the future. 

Steam navigation and the telegraph have made the 
nations one neighborhood, while trade and commerce 
are bringing all mankind into one community of interest. 
Keeping even flight with these electric-winged forces, 
Christian thought will carry its enlightenment, its culture, 
its science, its own persuasiveness, to all the peoples 
of the earth. As these factors come under moral direc- 
tion they will more and more prove agencies for trans- 
lating the nations into the kingdom. 

The missions of the Christian Church have mapped 
the territories of the world, have made for themselves 
grammars and lexicons of all languages, have mastered 
the histories of heathen religions, and are planting the 
seats of Christian education in the capitals of paganism. 
It is in the very nature of Christian truth, when once 
it has intrenched itself in the convictions and expe- 
riences of the human soul, to propagate itself. Every 
successful mission station becomes at once the head- 
quarters of a new moral community, the fountain of 
pure ideals and of spiritual enlightenment, the nucleus 
of a new civilization. The historian or the traveler 
who in these days seeks to minify the significance of 
Christian missions is both benighted and belated. 

A world congress, composed of elect men from the 
ends of the earth — of active missionaries, of represent- 
ative clergymen, of noted scholars, of laymen of inter- 
national reputation — counseling together in the spirit of 
sustained enthusiasm as to the best methods of utilizing 



196 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

and harmonizing the forces of missions for the more 
speedy Christianizing of the heathen world, is a move- 
ment big with history and prophecy. When it is remem- 
bered that missions as a distinct institution are really 
of recent origin, and when it is sought to measure their 
splendid moral achievements, or to understand the 
growing conviction -and enthusiasm with which the entire 
Christian world gives them its support, there is furnished 
a vision which should put to shame all our skepticism. 
Christian missions, as justly measured, carry in them- 
selves the promise and potency of the world's conquest 
to Christ. 

The rediscovery of the historic Christ, and the new 
uncovering of the great doctrines of the divine Father- 
hood and of human brotherhood as set forth in his 
gospel, are themselves facts that are to have bearings 
of untold significance upon the world-progress of the 
kingdom. Providentially, there has been a long prepara- 
tion and converging of events for the world advent 
of Jesus the Christ. Through missionary literature, 
through the wide invasion of Western thought into 
Oriental civilizations, through the increasing numbers of 
elect young minds from the Orient who are being edu- 
cated in the Christian universities of the West, and by 
ways innumerable, it, as a distinct phenomenon of this 
age, would seem to be the fact that Christ is moving 
irresistibly onward into all the seats of the world's 
thinking to take his rightful place as Saviour and 
Sovereign. 

Wherever Christ secures for himself full recognition, 
that recognition carries with it a quality of conquest 
which it is not easy to define or to measure. Christ 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 197 

himself has compared it to the leaven in the measure 
of meal. The influence of Christ's character and teach- 
ing goes nowhere without becoming a pervasive and 
transforming force in human society. It sweetens the 
social atmosphere as the very breath of heaven, and 
from its inspiration there come new and creative ideals 
for the shaping of human character. Morally it is an 
influence which causes the desert to blossom as the rose. 
Broadly measured, no better illustration of the leavening 
influence of the kingdom need be asked than is furnished 
in the contrast between the moral character of present 
Western civilizations and that of Rome, for instance, 
in the reign of Nero. Historians who cannot be per- 
sonally charged with undue leanings toward Christianity 
are authority for the statement that the changes for 
betterment between these two periods are most largely 
due to Christianity. Rome, in the time referred to, 
stood at the acme of pagan civilization. This same Rome 
has given laws of a high character to all subsequent 
civilizations. But in that Rome the sexual relations 
were unregulated by wholesome laws, and were prac- 
tically of the most depraved order. The wife was 
the chattel of her husband, the instrument of his caprice. 
Infanticide was a general and unchecked crime. The 
sacredness of human life was a fact unrecognized and 
unregulative in the public thought. Later in the his- 
tory of this same great civilization, in the Coliseum 
were seats for sixty thousand spectators, and the most 
fascinating amusement in the world's capital, the fighting 
to the death of trained gladiators, or the casting of 
slaves and of helpless women to the wild beasts in the 
arena, filled these seats with multitudes who gaped and 



198 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

gloated over scenes of human butchery. In this Rome 
eleemosynary institutions, such as homes for orphans, 
asylums for the blind, hospitals for the sick and wounded, 
were unknown. 

We need not stop to picture the contrast which present 
Western civilization shows as against those ancient 
conditions. Western civilization, as we have much occa- 
sion to know, is in many capital features far from ideaL 
But, as compared with the best that Rome exhibited, 
the present, in the matter of all the humanities, in 
the sphere of all social and moral ideals, seems like 
a far step toward the establishment of the kingdom of 
God among men. The fruits of the kingdom, such as 
the growth of justice toward all men; the exaltation 
and protection of womanhood; legislation to guard the 
sacred rights of childhood; the vast multiplication of 
benevolent endowments for the unfortunate, the sick, 
and the poor; universal provision for the education of 
children; increasing legislation in the interests of 
labor j the humanizing of the prison systems ; systematic 
mitigation of the horrors of war in the humane 
treatment and exchange of prisoners ; the growing 
conviction among nations of the necessity of abol- 
ishing war and of settling international disputes before 
some common tribunal, such as the Hague Court — 
these, and nameless other beneficent facts, show the 
advent, the marshaling, and the progress of a move- 
ment which can but result in the divine conquest of 
the world. 

History itself furnishes inspiration for the most op- 
timistic forecast for the future of humanity. The very 
machinery of modern life reinforces this prophecy. 



THE KINGDOM AND HUMANITY 199 

Every great and labor-saving invention makes a call 
for a better manhood. Men of the highest type of 
ability and integrity, as never before, are called for 
to take charge and direction of the vast business and 
social organisms of the time. The very necessities of 
the business world make it increasingly imperative 
that the men who are to hold the representative and 
responsible positions shall be men not only of high 
ability, but of most unquestioned moral integrity — the 
kind of man called for in the Christian ideal. And 
so in the evolution of the business and industrial life 
of the world there is a conspiracy of conditions toward 
the development of the very kind of character through 
which God is finally to establish his kingdom among 
men. 

To Christian faith there is, and can be, no valid ground 
for discouragement. The kingdom is of God's own 
purpose. We at our best, probably, have but a poor 
measurement of God's diagram for humanity. We are 
impatient. We see great wrongs that need righting, 
darkness that needs to be dissipated, wanderers that 
seem dying for want of rescue, and we are either per- 
turbed with a soul-consuming desire to do God's work 
all at once or we are paralytic from despair. God is 
patient. He is sure of his goal. There is not a single 
aimless or mistaken line in his large diagram of human 
history. He will make no failure. He is not miserly 
of time. With him a thousand years are as a single 
day. There is much to prompt the belief that, as meas- 
ured by human thinking, God works slowly toward 
his divine ends. But he never forgets, he never turns 
aside, he will work continuously, unfailingly, until 



aoo MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

finally the earth itself shall be made beauteous as the 
heritage of his Son. 

"Red of the dawn! 
Is it turning a fainter red ? So be it, but when shall we lay 
The ghost of the brute that is walking and haunting us yet, and be 

free? 
In a hundred, a thousand winters? Ah! what shall our children be, 
The men of a hundred thousand, a million summers away?" 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 



201 



It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal 
character, which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has 
filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown 
itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, condi- 
tions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest 
incentive to its practice. — Lecky. 

Is it a mere accident or an evil fate that just at this moment Chris- 
tendom should have been called, as it were, into the very presence of 
Jesus of Nazareth, and should be face to face with him as no Christian 
century has been since the first? Is it for nothing that this Divine 
Apparition should have come forth once more before the eyes of 
men, that this Voice which speaks in such great accents of the infinite 
value of the human soul should have been heard anew by human 
ears? Is it for nothing that just when this great temptation has 
come to the rich and powerful peoples to treat the weaker and poorer 
as mere instruments of their avarice and lust and pride, the solemn 
shadow of the cross should fall between, and just when the pride of 
earthly empire is at its highest the vision of the Divine Kingdom 
should turn its glories dim for all the keener eyes? What Christian 
man at least can believe it? To me, it seems wiser to say, "Oh the 
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How 
unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" — 
D. S. Cairns. 

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 
So the All-great were the All-loving too — 
So through the thunder comes a human voice, 
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here! 
Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself! 
Thou hast no power, nor canst conceive of mine; 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for thee!" 

— Browning. 



CHAPTER XII 
CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 

The Christ of the Gospels, viewed in the broadest 
history and in the most searching light of to-day, loses 
no claim to supreme divinity. In the process of ages 
manners, customs, laws, literatures, change. The birth 
of new sciences, the evolution of new laws, have given 
new ideals and new forms to entire civilizations. But 
Christ is not only the contemporary of all ages, his 
ideals are immeasurably in advance of the best civiliza- 
tions, the perfection of his personality is beyond that 
of all other men, and the most sane and critical thought 
is giving him more and more undisputed place as the 
supreme moral sovereign of the world. 

It would seem that there ought to be no room for 
doubt as to the place which Christ came to hold in 
the minds of the New Testament writers. It would be 
interesting to trace the evolution of the convictions 
which these writers finally held concerning him. His 
advent among them was humble. The material sur- 
roundings of his earthly years were those of poverty, 
and largely of obscurity. He stole upon their imagina- 
tion by no parade of pomp or of retinue, by none of 
the outward trappings of power or of authority. But 
in some way they came to believe in him as the Divine 
Son of God, and in their worship, their convictions, 
their love, they ranked him as the rightful Saviour, 
Judge, and Sovereign of the world. And this culminating 

conviction was no passing emotion with them. In its 

203 



2o 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

support they heroically endured persecution and death 
itself. 

It is not reasonable to assume that the convictions 
and conduct of these disciples were inspired by any- 
thing less than a great reality. Their lives were too 
serious, their convictions too deep, their love too joyous, 
their zeal too unremitting, their loyalty too heroic, 
to permit us for a moment to believe that their faith 
rested upon a mere impulse, or was inspired by some 
passing vision. If men could ever be assumed to be 
moved by profound realities, or possessed by the divinest 
truth, these were the men who in the Pentecostal morn- 
ing of the Church espoused the doctrines and linked 
themselves with the destinies of Christianity. The 
whole life of early Christianity, from its baptismal 
anointing in the upper room in Jerusalem to the time 
when the last book of the New Testament was written, 
is not only entitled to, but asserts for itself, a most 
significant place among the epoch-making forces of 
history. And the one significant thing, the one wonder 
of the whole movement, is that Christ, who was born 
in a manger, who was a carpenter of Nazareth, who 
in the days of his greatest success was a homeless wan- 
derer, and who at last was crucified between two thieves, 
was himself the source, the life, and the abiding inspi- 
ration of this history. 

The public life of Christ at longest was very brief. But 
there was something about him so unique, so compelling 
of attention, so benign in ministry, so authoritative 
in teaching, so lofty in claim, so spotless in character, 
as very early to impress the masses and the author- 
ities that a most unusual personality had made his advent 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 205 

among men. By the authorities of the temple Jesus 
came early to be considered as a radical, as one whose 
mission was iconoclastic in its relations to the time- 
honored traditions and usages of the Judaic religion. 
The enmity toward him of scribes and rulers became 
increasingly intensified until at last it settled into the 
bitter and determined purpose to destroy his influence 
by the destruction of his life. If his history were to 
end here, it were no common thing that one with his 
known lineage and environment should have become the 
subject of such general attention, should be the center 
of so much adulation and of so much contention. He 
spent the closing period of his life in and about Jeru- 
salem, where he was most conspicuously the object 
of both popular enthusiasm and of official enmity. 
That his disciples should worship him as God's Anointed 
Son, that the multitudes should wait with enthusiasm 
upon his teaching, that the rulers should plot against 
his life, all evidenced his extraordinary character. 

Death furnishes the most decisive test as to the abid- 
ing quality of one's fame and influence. It usually 
ends both. The scribes and the rulers reasoned that 
if they could put an end to Christ's life his influence 
and his cause would die with him. But death, so far 
from defeating Christ, seemed to be but a necessary 
condition of making more secure the fame of his name 
and the triumph of his mission. Within six weeks 
after his lifeless body had been laid in the tomb he 
more than ever was the central figure in the thought 
of all Judea. On a given day his disciples, filled with 
a great inspiration, stood up and proclaimed his resur- 
rection from the dead, and preached the necessity of 



206 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

repentance and faith in his name as the one only Saviour 
whom God has given to men. The preaching of Pente- 
cost was like a proclamation from heaven, thousands, 
including many among the scribes and rulers, also 
those who had joined in the very clamor for Christ's 
crucifixion, yielding instantly to its persuasion. No 
contrast could be greater than this : on one day a scourged 
and apparently helpless victim perishing on the cross 
of a malefactor; a few days later, the capital city agitated 
to its rim over the fact that Christ was alive and was 
openly preached as the God-given Saviour and Judge 
of the world. 

But this contrast, wonderful as it is, is but a typical 
incident in the history of the New Testament Christ. 
His death, so far from ending his influence, seems to 
have marked the fountain source of some of the most 
enduring and widespread historic movements and inspi- 
rations which have engrossed the thought and stirred 
the activities of manldnd. The institution which we 
know as the Christian Church may be traced for its 
origin to the open door of Christ's sepulcher. Since 
that date nineteen centuries have gone, centuries which 
have marked the greatest changes and the most mar- 
velous advances in human history. Not a single nation 
in Europe which was alive then exists now. The Amer- 
ican continent, the seat of present great empires, was 
then absolutely unknown. Not one of the great inven- 
tions which in, modern days have multiplied man's 
industrial capacity a thousandfold was then even dreamed 
of. The great sciences which have given man a new 
mastery of nature, which have opened upon his vision 
the depths of immensity, and which have furnished 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 207 

his thought with vast new philosophies of existence, 
were all unknown. These centuries have been at once 
the most destructive and the most creative in history. 
Under their crumbling touch the mightiest structures 
of ancient skill have perished. In their creative atmos- 
pheres olden creeds, philosophies, and religions have 
been superseded. But a marvelous thing is that, amid 
all the destructive and constructive forces of these 
centuries, the single institution of the Christian Church, 
the institution founded by Jesus Christ, the one institu- 
tion which bears his name, and which is without sig- 
nificance save as it promotes his mission and gospel 
among men — this institution has not only survived 
through all changes and through all centuries, but it 
has spread itself mightily over the known earth; and 
to-day its faith is more buoyant, its forces more mighty, 
and its plans for world conquest more confident than 
ever before. 

It might be charged that the Church has been char- 
acterized by all the defects of a human institution. 
Let the reply be, Yes. In its nominal ranks there have 
always been men, some of them powerful, who them- 
selves have not been governed by the spirit of its Founder. 
Whole sections of the Church, through human abuses, 
have sometimes been corrupt. All this must be sadly 
admitted. But it remains true that, taken by and 
large, the Church has existed in all ages, in ages of 
darkness and of cruelty, in ages of ignorance and of 
superstition, as the most enlightening, the most human- 
izing, the most inspiring and uplifting agency in human 
history. It has brought civilization to the barbarian, 
education and enlightenment to benighted peoples, 



208 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

humane ministries to helpless age, to the sick, the suffer- 
ing, the poor; it has created around womanhood an 
atmosphere of sanctity, instilled into civilization a 
sacred sense of human life, has been the evangel of 
righteousness to the world, and has transformed and 
inspired the lives of multitudes, otherwise helpless 
and hopeless, by bringing to them a divine, a sin-pardon- 
ing and heaven-revealing Saviour. 

The Church has been the great inspirer and educator 
of humane and righteous ideals. It may be claimed, 
and truthfully, that very many benevolent agencies 
are at work in human society which are not directed 
or controlled by the Church. But it may be equally 
asserted that these very agencies were born in an atmos- 
phere which itself has been made humane and benev- 
olent by centuries of Christian influence. It is not 
my purpose to enlarge upon the history of the Christian 
Church. The Church speaks for itself. Its record fur- 
nishes beyond comparison the most valuable of all 
histories for the last nineteen hundred years. It has been 
the fountain, as not all other institutions together, of 
the best ideals of righteousness, of moral education, of 
spiritual inspirations and hopes for humanity. The fact 
to be emphasized is that this institution was founded 
by Jesus Christ. He is the supreme object of its wor- 
ship and its service. Its sole mission is to build up 
his kingdom and to magnify his name. If Christ were 
God, then the Church has an adequate cause for its 
being; if Christ be not divine, then it must remain a 
great and unexplained enigma of history. 

It is necessary to recur to the literature of the New 
Testament that through it we may look a little more 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 209 

closely and distinctively upon the person of the Christ. 
Within a period beginning about twenty-five years 
after the death of Christ, and thence on to about the 
close of the first century, there were written all the 
books of the New Testament. In this literature there 
are contained the germinal statement of all Christian 
teaching, vivid sketches of the origin and early life 
and character of the Church, and, central to all, the 
portraiture of the Christ, a character so unique, so 
perfect, so divine in function and in teaching, as to 
have commanded increasingly the study and the admira- 
tion of the ages. I am quite aware of the methods by 
which it has been assumed that the pictures of the 
Christ presented in the New Testament are not genuinely 
those of a historic person, but are the products of ideal- 
izing processes by which a truly wonderful man had in 
the minds of his followers and admirers come to be 
transformed and apotheosized into the semblance of a 
God. It is my conviction that the grounds for such 
a theory have been amply and critically searched, and 
that they are found, in the light of most competent 
scholarship, to be utterly unsustaining of the theory 
itself. On general principles, it is unreasonable to 
attribute to the writers of the New Testament, one or 
all of them together, the spiritual, moral, and artistic 
insight which would permit them, by any processes 
of idealizing whatsoever, to evolve such a character 
as that which is presented in the Christ of the New 
Testament. To believe such a theory would be to 
credit a few ordinary men, men whose limitations are 
quite well ascertained, with the creation of a character 
such as not all the art and literature of the ages com- 



2io MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

bined have been able to produce. The matchless picture 
of Christ is in the New Testament because the matchless 
character of the Christ was historic. Christ is not a 
literary creation. The writers, in a spirit of fidelity, 
in the mood of artless truth, wrote in the records the 
facts about Christ as they were known not only by 
themselves, but by a multitude of witnesses. There is 
abundant evidence that they were unequal to the trans- 
lation into their literary forms of Christ's character 
and teachings. Christ was so much greater, so much 
more wonderful, than themselves as always to transcend 
their ability to give him adequate portraiture. These 
early writers, so far themselves from exhausting the 
facts which they record, have given historic data of 
the Christ so potential in quality as to challenge increas- 
ingly the devout and critical scholarship of all sub- 
sequent ages. The most exhaustive study of the Christ 
of the Gospels shows conclusively that so far from the 
world's having outgrown him, he stands morally and 
intellectually in advance of the latest age. He is clearly, 
and without a rival, the transcendent spiritual teacher 
and moral sovereign of the twentieth century. 

As has been indicated, the modern world has become 
wonderfully rich in material and subjects which chal- 
lenge human interest. The lands and seas of earth 
have been universally explored. The sources of natural 
wealth have been assiduously sought in all climes. A 
world-wide commerce has united the ends of the earth 
in the bonds of a common interest. Electricity and the 
printer's art now furnish to a world-democracy of readers 
the daily history of the race. Science has made the 
modern man familiar with the processes of nature in 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 211 

earth and sea and sky. The modern world has developed 
great universities and training schools which, command- 
ing the best appliances of learning, are sending forth 
in increasing numbers into every field of investigation 
trained and expert seekers after truth. This is a day 
preeminently of peerless research and of scientific anal- 
ysis. All histories, all philosophies, all creeds of the 
past are subjected with inquisitorial severity to the 
searchlight and dissection of most expert critical methods. 
The ghosts of superstition and demons of ignorance 
are being driven from their ancient haunts. The world 
in all fields of investigation, in discovery, in science, 
in art, in invention, in commerce, in history, in literature 
and philosophy, has in this modern age unfolded a 
bewildering wealth of subjects which summon to then- 
study the best trained and the most thoughtful minds 
of the race. Of the modern investigator it may be 
said that his ruling passion is the search for truth. In 
any field where demonstration is possible he takes 
nothing for granted. He approaches history, traditions, 
creeds, demanding that they uncover to him their naked 
facts — the truths on which they rest. Such are some 
of the characteristic features of the era through which 
the world is now passing. 

Is there any room in such a world as this for the 
memory of a Syrian peasant, born nineteen hundred years 
ago in conditions of obscurity and poverty? Is there 
any reason why the character or the mission of a wander- 
ing and homeless Teacher, himself the companion of 
Galilean fishermen, should have any place in the crowded 
history, or why he should receive attention from the 
learned teachers, of the present? If there were not 



2i2 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

something marvelously unique in the person and history 
of Jesus of Nazareth such questions, of course, would 
never be suggested. The world of modern thought is 
like a surging sea in which nothing survives save that 
which is moored to living interests. But the most 
luminous lightspot in this surge of modern thought, 
the center to which converge the most serious interests 
and the profoundest thinking of our times, is that 
which is marked by the cross of Jesus Christ. For 
some reason the time-era of the last nineteen centuries 
and the best civilizations of the world not only bear 
his name, but in these latest decades his place in his- 
tory, his character, his mission, have challenged a 
more critical examination, have stirred more profound 
thought, have inspired the writing of more books, 
than any other single subject which has appealed to 
the human mind. 

The discussion of Christ and his mission has not 
been of a neutral, of a one-sided, character. It has 
been conducted from all sources and from all stand- 
points of view. While his admirers, worshipers, and 
defenders have been an ever-increasing host, the skeptic 
and the hostile student, armed with the keenest crit- 
icism, have wrought with all human skill to destroy 
his elaims to divinity. Nothing is more interesting or 
more reassuring than to observe the final effect of all 
hostile criticism upon Christ's historic standing. Men 
have arisen to fame because of their brilliant onsets 
against the divinity of his character. In recent times, 
Strauss, Baur, Renan, and many others, a whole galaxy 
of brilliant scholars, have elaborated theories and special 
criticism which for the time have seemed to deal stag- 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 213 

gering, if not fatal, blows against the cherished views 
of Christianity concerning its Founder. 

For brief periods, here and there, the destructive 
critic has seemed to hold his place strongly in the field. 
But, in every case, it has only required time for the 
Christian scholar to investigate when the grounds have 
been cleared and the criticisms demolished. Since the 
day when the Jewish mob assaulted Pilate's judgment- 
seat the clamor for the destruction of Christ has never 
ceased. In every age somebody has prepared a costly 
tomb for his final repose. But from every Calvary 
and every sepulcher prepared by his foes Christ has 
emerged with enriched laurels and with a more fully 
acknowledged sovereignty. The clear, plain fact is that 
the critics have been able to work no impairment to his 
highest claims, to effect no check upon his growing fame. 
At the worst, they have been but unwilling contributors 
to the enlargement of his place in the knowledge, affec- 
tions, and worship of mankind. The real place which Christ 
now holds in the world's thought admits of no comparison. 
If in this latest generation there could be gathered a con- 
gress of the world's elect souls, including kings, statesmen, 
ecclesiastics, scholars, scientists, great captains of mer- 
chandise and of industry, the advent of Jesus Christ to the 
presence of such a company would morally compel their 
falling upon their faces in worship at his feet. There 
would be no man among them all that could claim any 
measure of equality with him. There is no character in 
all human history which approaches him either in fame 
or influence. In moral excellence he eclipses all the 
saints, in wisdom all the philosophers. His spiritual 
empire in the world is without boundaries. 



2i 4 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

A fact to be noted is that Christ has steadily out- 
grown the best conceptions of his own followers. The 
Church is in possession to-day of a larger and richer 
Christ than was apprehended by the men of the New 
Testament. This is not because he was not just as 
divine then as now, but because a larger light rests upon 
his personality. Devout Christian thought has a larger 
translation of his character than was even possible to 
the apostolic age. This process will continue. The 
Christ of the thirtieth century will be a far richer rev- 
elation to the world than is the Christ of to-day. All 
this must be explained by the fact of a continuous 
growth of insight, of spiritual apprehension in the life 
and mind of the Church. 

How is the advent of such a character into history 
to be accounted for? There is no law of evolution 
that explains him. If he were merely human there 
should be some antecedent conditions which would 
unfold to us the secret of his unique and matchless 
character. These conditions do not exist. There ap- 
pears but one true and sufficient explanation of Jesus 
Christ, and this is the one repeatedly set forth in the 
New Testament. He came forth direct from God. His 
genealogy is not to be sought in any philosophy of 
evolution. He was not a child of evolution. He is the 
Lord of Life who himself has directed the very processes 
of evolution. By the might of his own creative word 
the worlds themselves were formed. No less a hypoth- 
esis is at all adequate to deal with his history. The 
critics fail to destroy him, or even to impair his influence ; 
he transcends the best ideals of his own worshipers; 
his kingdom of truth steadily advances against all the 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 215 

powers of darkness, superstition, and error; and all this 
because he is the Divine Son whose mission it is to 
translate the world into God's kingdom. His rule will 
not lessen, but, like the stone in the prophet's vision, 
it will grow till it shall fill the whole earth. Wherefore 
God shall also highly exalt him, and give him a name 
which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus 
every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things 
in earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue 
shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory 
of God the Father. 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 

(Continued) 



2T7 



"Step by step since time began 
We see the steady gain of man; 
For still the new transcends the old, 
In signs and tokens manifold ; 
Slaves rise up men ; the olive waves 
With roots deep set in battle graves." 

The crying need of our own age in the industrial sphere is the 
deepening and diffusion of the sense of the Common Good. ... If 
it were possible to imbue capitalist and laboring class alike with this 
motive, the whole sordid struggle would change its character, a pro- 
gressive concordat between them would be established, and society 
would enter on a new and nobler epoch. Suppose that the capitalist 
could be brought to view his work as a social function, and his gains 
as a trust bestowed upon him for the public good. Suppose that the 
laborer viewed his work as public service, and were able to look upon 
his wages as controlled in amount by the same consideration of pub- 
lic advantage; suppose that devotion to the common weal became a 
passion in the sphere of economic life, as it has often been historically 
under militarism, would not the whole situation be radically changed? 
The sting would be taken out of labor troubles, and the poison out of 
the blood of the social organism. Social inequalities would remain, 
but there would be reason in them which could be recognized by the 
reason of the individual. — D. S. Cairns. 

This is the gospel of labor — ring it, ye bells of the kirk — 

The Lord of Love came down from above, to live with the men who 

work. 
This is the rose that he planted, here in the thorn-cursed soil — 
Heaven is blest with perfect rest, but the blessing of earth is toil. 

— Henry van Dyke. 



218 



CHAPTER XIII 
CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE (Continued) 

There is one great and conclusive argument for the 
divine mission of Jesus Christ which, I am impressed, 
has not been too freely used and accredited in the general 
discussions of his history. This is the argument fur- 
nished from the experimental faith and life of the Church. 
Christ not only appeared as a moral teacher, but he 
came to fulfill the functions of a Redeemer and Saviour 
in behalf of a sinful human race. It was predicted 
that his name should be called "Jesus" because he 
would save his people from their sins. His gospel pro- 
claims that through his cross he has wrought redemption 
and salvation for sinners. He comes to man as a Divine 
Saviour. It is his office to pardon sins, to cancel guilt, 
and to impart divine peace to sin-smitten, penitent 
souls. He himself promised the abiding companionship 
of a Divine Comforter to his faithful followers. He 
came to impart both the fact and the joy of Sonship 
in God's family to as many as should believe on his name. 

There is in all this the suggestion of some great divine 
inworking in the human soul. If Christ really fulfills 
these promises in the lives of men there can be nothing 
fictitious or neutral in the results. The soul in which 
he works this change of forgiveness and to whom is 
imparted the gift and sense of Sonship has really come 
into a new life, into a new and divine world. It is 
reasonable that this change should be a matter of pro- 
found experience. The sun rising out of the night and 

219 



220 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

flooding the world with its light does not work a greater 
apparent change upon the face of nature than really 
takes place in the human soul in which Christ has wrought 
the forgiveness of sin, and to whom is imparted the 
joyful sense of Sonship in God's household. 

The fact of this divine inworking is not left to the 
mere conjecture of the individual. The promise is 
definite that the Spirit — the Divine Comforter — shall 
himself bear witness with our spirits that we are born 
of God. The evidence of the pardoned life through 
Jesus Christ is experimental. The methods and impres- 
sions of the saving Spirit may be as various as human 
individuality. But it may be accepted as a universal 
fact that the pardoned soul lives in possession of a 
divine peace — a peace not born of earth. The religion 
of Jesus Christ is demonstrably experimental. It utters 
its testimony in the soul of its recipient not less cer- 
tainly than does the grateful transition from winter to 
springtime report itself to the senses. 

And so, through all its history, the Church of Christ 
has been a witnessing Church. Out of its living experi- 
ences of salvation have been born the loftiest hymns 
of gratitude. Spiritual literatures, full of inspiration 
and sweetness, pure as waters from the river of life, 
have in all ages fairly sung themselves from out the 
hearts of saints whose conscious communion with Jesus 
Christ has filled them with a joy like that of heaven. 
It is not necessary to assert, and it would not be true, 
that the usual state of Christian experience is one of 
rapture. It is true that to multitudes in their clear 
moods of faith in Christ, in their conscious personal 
relation to him, there have come spiritual experiences 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 22 i 

as uplifting and memorable as a transfiguration. Such 
experiences are valuable as giving altitude and vision 
to the soul. But to the great mass of Christian dis- 
ciples the rapturous experience is exceptional. In all, 
however, the graces and fruits of the Spirit grow in 
the measure of their faith and obedience toward Christ, 
and these by a consciousness of the highest value are 
certain of the faith and the hope that is within 
them. 

In all the Christian centuries an innumerable com- 
pany of sane, thoughtful, and calm people have been 
the most firm witnesses to the truth of Christianity. 
They have been so confident of their personal salva- 
tion in Jesus Christ that sooner than to renounce their 
faith and their hopes they would prefer the fate of 
martyrdom. The teachers of Christianity, the preachers 
of the gospel, have in all ages been among the foremost 
of their times in intelligence and in character. These 
have not only had their own cherished Christian experi- 
ences, but they have been the expounders of the faith, 
the men who have given rational and logical expression 
to the doctrines of Christian truth. It would be wonder- 
ful indeed if all the generations of Christian teachers 
and preachers, many of whom have been eminent as 
saints, had given their thought, their learning, their 
energies only to a service of fables! It is safe to say 
that no testimony appealing to human judgment is 
more worthy of credence than that which has been 
furnished for the truth of Christianity by such men. 
The living testimony of untold thousands to their faith 
in Jesus Christ, and the steady, persistent utterance 
of this testimony to the world through sixty genera- 



222 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

tions, would surely seem valuable evidence for the 
divinity of the Christian religion. 

The radical transformation of character which has 
been in innumerable cases effected in the name of Christ 
is a phenomenon which cannot be rationally ignored. 
Where one's life from inheritance and education has 
been habitually gentle and refined it is not to be expected 
that any radical change in outward manner would ensue 
from the entrance of such upon the Christian life. But 
the demonstrated capacity of the Christian religion to 
transform apparently most helpless sinners into saints 
has in all ages been one of its glories. When the Spirit 
of Christ enters into a man it carries with it the kind 
of power which makes the vile pure, the liar truthful, 
the drunken sober, the cruel kind, the brutal gentle, 
and which gives to the very slaves of evil habits the 
freedom and beauty of a redeemed manhood. 

There could be imposed upon no reformatory claim 
a severer test than that it be required radically to change 
the confirmed habits of an evil life, and to set the will 
and passion of such a life in the direction of purity and 
righteousness. Yet this is a test to which the Christian 
religion fearlessly submits itself, and never, when fairly 
made, with the result of failure. A sudden and radical 
change in the convictions and habits of a strong char- 
acter is one of the last things to be philosophically 
expected. Yet, Christianity has wrought this kind of 
change in instances without number. 

A conspicuous and familiar example is Saint Paul. 
It has been attempted to show that Paul was a sort of 
visionary character, possibly a victim of epilepsy, and, 
therefore, an unreliable witness in his testimony to the 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 223 

power of Christ over his own life. This assumption 
will not bear examination. It is too absurd to chal- 
lenge attention, much less respect. He was a man of 
imperial intellect, while in moral courage and achieve- 
ment he stands well-nigh peerless. It is true he had 
a warm heart, an emotional nature, but he was as sane 
a man as ever lived. His testimony to Christ admits 
of no understanding save on the basis of his personal 
experience. His experience can be accounted for only 
on the ground of its absolute genuineness. It was an 
experience which changed suddenly, radically, utterly, 
the purposes, the emotions, the conduct of one of the 
most invincible of men. This is a history which cannot 
be explained by any trivial philosophy. Saint Paul 
himself accounts for it solely from the fact that he 
had received a direct revelation from the risen and 
glorified Christ. And this experience was no passing 
impulse in his life. From the moment of his conversion 
he was supremely possessed by new motives and con- 
victions. Under their sway and inspiration he gave 
himself to a self-sacrificing and unremitting Christian 
service which has challenged the wonder and admira- 
tion of the centuries. In obedience to his convictions 
he finally went to heroic martyrdom. Surely, Saint 
Paul's faith must have been based upon some great 
reality. Men of the stamp of Saul of Tarsus do not 
pay such cost of service, such tribute of sacrifice and 
suffering, and finally martyrdom itself, in response to 
the mere promptings of some baseless dream. 

At the age of thirty-two Augustine had run the entire 
gamut of sinful living. A young man, educated, and 
of unusually strong and brilliant intellect, he seemed 



224 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

a confirmed debauchee. With such a history and char- 
acter, his eye one day fell upon the following passage 
from Saint Paul's Epistles: "Let us walk honestly, as 
in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness. . . . Put ye 
on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for 
the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." This passage 
went like a dart through his soul. In that very hour 
he was vividly converted and became a disciple of Jesus 
Christ. Afterward a bishop in the Church, he is known 
in history as the most influential theologian in the 
Christian centuries, giving a form to theology which 
was dominant and well-nigh universally accepted for 
fifteen hundred years. But from the hour of his con- 
version to the day of his death he walked worthy of 
his high calling. 

Transformations thus wrought in the characters and 
lives of eminent men like Saint Paul and Saint Augustine 
are of the greatest significance, but really no more so 
than the changes wrought through faith in Jesus Christ 
in the characters of apparently the most hopeless and 
abandoned sinners. The indubitable historic fact is that 
multitudes of sinners, vile and desperate sinners, have 
been wondrously redeemed and saved through his name. 

Jerry McAuley spent his later years living the life 
of a saint, and died at last in sublime assurance of heaven. 
This is one of his characteristic testimonies in the Water 
Street Mission: "I was a thief, an outcast, yes, a regular 
bum; but I gave my heart to God, and he saved me 
from whisky, and tobacco, and everything that's wicked 
and bad. I used to be one of the worst drunkards in 
the Fourth Ward, but Jesus came into my heart, and took 
the whole thing out of me, and I don't want it any more." 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 225 

Samuel H. Hadley, for nearly twenty years Jerry 
McAuley's successor as superintendent of the Water 
Street Mission, a few years ago went out of life bearing 
with him the love and respect of the best Christian 
citizens of New York. Yet this man had gone down to 
the most degrading depths of sin. He was thought to 
be hopeless; he was hopeless of himself. But one night 
in the mission, while kneeling in prayer, he felt that 
Christ with all his love and power had come into his 
life. He says: "From that moment until now I have 
never wanted a drink of whisky, and have never seen 
money enough to make me take one. The precious 
touch of Jesus's cleansing blood in my soul took from 
my stomach, my brain, my blood, and my imagination 
the hell-born desire for whisky. . . . One other thing 
has never ceased to be a wonder: I was so addicted to 
profanity that I would swear in my sleep. I could 
not speak ten consecutive words without an oath. The 
form or thought of an oath has never presented itself 
to me since. Bless his dear name forever. ... A few 
weeks afterward the dear Lord showed me that I was 
leaning on tobacco, and that I had better lean entirely 
on him. I threw my plug away one night down the 
aisle of the mission, and the desire was removed. . . . The 
wonderful mystery of God's love for sinners never ceased 
to excite the most lively emotions in my breast, and 
has never become an old story. How the precious, pure, 
and spotless Saviour could stoop down and bear away 
my drunkenness and delirium tremens, to this day fills 
my soul with gratitude. . . . Surely, if any man be in 
Jesus Christ he is a new creature." 

Cases like those of McAuley and Hadley are too 



226 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

numerous to escape critical attention, too well attested 
to admit of rational doubt. The late Professor James, 
of Harvard University, in his stout volume entitled 
Varieties of Religious Experience, takes account of a 
large number of striking conversions. He has no pa- 
tience with any theories that would dispose of such 
experiences as a mere result of impulse or of temporary 
excitement. He believes that these experiences are not 
only most genuine, but that they often result in the 
radical betterment of character. He was not a man 
of orthodox Christian faith, but he admitted that these 
religious uplifts only occur when the human soul is 
looking up to some power higher than its own. 

The phenomena of religious conversion and of con- 
sequent transformation of character are, in view of 
their frequency and importance, as certainly entitled to 
scientific and philosophic consideration as are any other 
phenomena of which we know. Mr. Harold Begbie, in 
his remarkable book, Twice Born Men, has, as a matter 
of philosophical study from the fruits of mission work 
in a single and comparatively small section of London, 
selected a few characters which this work has lifted 
from the lowest and most dissolute depths of submerged 
life. These characters, by some power seemingly not 
less divine than miraculous, have been so transformed 
in taste, in habit, in action, in their outward garb, 
as to walk and shine in the very neighborhoods of their 
former evil haunts like saints. 

If the philosophic critic will once divest himself of 
his antireligious bias; if he will dismiss all temptation 
to pass them by simply because they come under the 
class of religious experiences, he will find in these cases 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 227 

of conversion as interesting phenomena as ever chal- 
lenged his critical thought. And, let it be fully conceded, 
it is highly legitimate that all these phenomena should 
be subjected to the test of closest psychological scrutiny. 
The field in which these religious experiences and trans- 
formations occur is certainly one which it is the function 
of psychological science to explore. But when psy- 
chology has done its best to search and to analyze these 
experiences it can do no more than to report processes. 
It has no faculty for discovering or revealing the sufficient 
cause to which the marvels of result are to be traced. 
It might be well to listen to the testimony of the sub- 
jects themselves of these experiences. With remarkable 
unanimity and emphasis they ascribe the beneficent 
changes that have come into their lives to the wonder- 
working grace of Jesus Christ, and to this alone. In 
their new-found joy they say : 

"I have seen the face of Jesus: 
Tell me not of aught beside. 
I have heard the voice of Jesus: 
All my soul is satisfied." 

In the strength of companionship with him multitudes 
whom sin has smitten into ruin and helplessness have 
been morally resurrected, and have gone forth into 
a new life, emancipated from evil habit and temptation, 
cleansed at the very fountains of their thought. 

Surely, if God has instituted a method of saving 
sinners, the severest test of this method would be fur- 
nished in cases such as here presented. But when fairly 
tried on its own conditions the grace of Jesus Christ 
has been fully equal to the needs, however extreme 
the case. Among all other remedial agencies known to 



228 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

men, is there any that has shown itself equal to working 
such miracles of moral healing? Not one. Not all 
philosophy, science, and human skill combined have 
been able to save and transform the moral outcast. 
But the gospel of Jesus has been doing this humanly 
impossible thing all through its history. And this is 
what Christ himself declared: "The Son of man came 
into this world to seek and to save that which was lost." 
But for the purposes of testimony we need not confine 
our survey of the saving power of Christ to what it may 
do for extreme cases of those far gone in vicious living. 
If we would rightly value Christ's gracious mission we 
must study its fruits as seen in the saner and sweeter 
atmospheres of human society. Faith in Jesus Christ 
and obedience to his gospel have developed the finest 
manhood and womanhood of the world. The most 
beautiful, pure, and intelligent home-life of earth is 
found in the Christian community. Christianity has not 
only given birth to the most perfect systems of educa- 
tion, but has furnished the highest ideals for the develop- 
ment and training of character. Faith in and fellowship 
with the Christ of the New Testament have brought 
to the lives of individuals the divinest values. Under 
the inspiring ideals of the gospel men have learned to 
love righteousness and to hate meanness, have been 
kept pure and sweet in speech, in imagination, in habit. 
The gospel has given sanctity to domestic love, and 
children have been born into homes whose moral atmos- 
pheres are sweetened as with the very breath of heaven. 
The gospel of Jesus has brought divinest consolation in 
hours of bereavement, has furnished sustaining grace 
on beds of pain, has been a sure staff of support when 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 329 

earthly fortunes have failed. It furnishes to old age the 
vision and cheer of heavenly hope, and at the very 
last enables the saint to pillow his head in peace and 
to go out of this life in the transports of a victorious faith. 

Surely, if we are to judge Jesus Christ in the light 
of his exalted character, and by the fruits of his gospel, 
we can give him no less a rank than that which is ascribed 
to him in the New Testament. He came forth from 
heaven to be the Saviour of the world. He is the one 
whom God raised from the dead and hath set at his 
own right hand in heavenly places. 

There are some questions of first importance: Is 
Christianity practicable? Can the example and teaching 
of Christ be made the basis for f he government of human 
society? If we were forced to give a negative answer 
to these questions it would be to admit that Chris- 
tianity in its final promise is a failure, that Christ is 
unequal to the Kingship of the world. 

The fundamental facts underlying the governmental 
problem of Christianity are the Fatherhood of God, 
the brotherhood of man. The obligations growing out 
of these facts are voiced in two great commandments: 
first, that which enjoins supreme love to God; second, 
the requirement that a man shall love his neighbor 
as himself. The logic of the relations cannot be ques- 
tioned. If God is our Father, then it is a supreme duty 
to love him, to obey him, and, so far as possible, our- 
selves to become like him. If all men are our brothers, 
then all men without exception have a claim upon our 
love and upon our service. 

If now we are careful to survey the social ills which 
afflict society, the unscrupulous competition and flagrant 



230 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

dishonesty which too often appear in the world of trade, 
the wide and seemingly irrepressible conflicts which 
appear between labor and capital, the gross corruptions 
in politics, corruptions which darken the very annals 
of legislation, the caste feeling which separates race 
from race and class from class — we shall find that every 
one of these evils persists because the facts of God's 
Fatherhood and of human brotherhood are not prac- 
tically accepted and acted upon in human society. It 
is a fundamental aim of the gospel of Christ to create 
in the hearts of individuals and in society those motives 
and dispositions which will make impossible the con- 
tinuance of these evils. 

Is a practical Christian rule making headway in the 
earth? For answer, take an inventory of the humanities 
that inhere in modem civilization. Measure the popular 
and growing demand for righteousness in trade, in 
municipal government, in legislation, and in international 
relations. Note the indignant and sustained protest of 
society against such iniquities as the white-slave traffic 
and the gross agencies of intemperance. Count the 
splendid institutions of charity which shine as very 
gems in the crown of modern civilization. Study the 
spirit, the scope and success of modern missionary 
movements. In obedience to the final command of 
Christ the universal Church has within the last century 
organized missionary agencies which are planting the 
schools and propaganda of Christianity in all the centers 
of paganism. The success of missionary enterprises is 
such as to give promise of a day not far distant when 
whole nations now lying in heathendom shall be Christian. 
These, and innumerable kindred agencies of good, are 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 231 

all the fruitage of Christianity, and illustrate the firm 
and increasing hold which Christ has upon civilization. 
Indeed, the moral and humane advances of the best 
civilizations of to-day over the best paganisms of the 
past are but an index of the increasing and beneficent 
rule which Christianity is surely and widely asserting in 
the movements of histoiy. 

In a previous chapter I have emphasized the rela- 
tions of service to the kingdom. I recur to the same 
thought here for the purpose of illustrating the actual 
place which the example and teaching of Christ have 
given to service in modern ideals. Service is the one 
word which, more than any other, expresses the embodi- 
ment in action of the spirit of the kingdom. Christ 
himself illustrates the divine function of service by a 
wonderful object lesson. He was alone with his dis- 
ciples in a Jerusalem room. These disciples had been 
petulantly striving among themselves as to which should 
have the more honorable rank in the kingdom of Christ. 
They were full of a carnal ambition each to hold a place 
by which he should outrank his fellow, so little did they 
understand the true spirit of their Master's kingdom. 
The record tells us that Jesus, in the great conscious- 
ness of his relationship to God, in the fact that the 
Father had given all things into his hands, and that 
he was come out from God and was about to go back 
to God, arose from the common meal in which they 
had joined, and taking up a towel and pouring water 
into a basin proceeded to wash and to wipe the feet 
of his disciples. There is no parallel to this in history. 
Here is a divine Being, just come forth from God and 
about to return to God, with all things — all power — 



232 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

in his hands, immeasurably more royal than any king, 
and yet that he might illustrate to his disciples the 
divinest law of life performs upon them in person what 
would rank as a most menial service. 

Christ teaches that our highest obligation is discharged 
in service, and the measure of our obligation to serve 
is the measure of our power, of our resources. Love 
to God and to man will inspire the spirit of service. 
But service itself furnishes the best test and measure 
of one's love. Service furnishes the best evidence of 
one's sense of responsibility to the kingdom. Christ 
himself makes not creed, not profession, not official 
rank in his Church, the test on which men shall finally 
be approved or condemned — but service. This is the 
one lesson taught in his vivid description of a last 
judgment. 

Now, if we look deeply into the heart and conviction 
of our times, we shall find that no voice is clearer, no 
demand more emphatic, no sentiment more incarnate in 
modern life, than those which call upon all men, in 
the measure of their capacity, to serve the interests 
of their fellows. The spirit of Christ has so far cap- 
tivated human thought that men are coming everywhere 
to feel that if for themselves they would make the most 
of life and character they must seek out the best methods 
and channels of service to others. A sense of this fact 
prompts many a man of wealth, however his gains were 
gotten, to devise liberal benefactions for the service 
of human needs. The sordid rich man who is forgetful 
of the obligation of service which accompanies his 
wealth, but who is willing to live and die in the selfish 
direction of the same, is increasingly and justly regarded 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 233 

as a kind of monstrosity. A living and irrepressible 
sentiment of the times more and more measures the 
vc.lue of the rich man by the measure of the moral con- 
tribution which through his wealth he gives to or with- 
holds from society. But not the rich alone; every man, 
in the measure of his ability, Christ holds responsible 
for serving the brotherhood of the kingdom. 

The great corollary of the brotherhood of man is 
the solidarity of human interests and needs. Service 
alone can fill and satisfy the diagram of these needs, 
and all service which the real interests of humanity 
require is essentially noble in itself. Christianity idealizes 
service, and honors its loyal doer whatever may be the 
sphere of his task. A perfect world can never come 
where needed work at any point is left undone. Every 
true worker, however humble his sphere, is one who 
in his place is contributing something to the perfection 
of the kingdom which Christ is building in the world. 
This fact gives dignity to every act of honest toil. It 
is not the spirit of Christianity to measure men by 
their spheres of work, but by their fidelity to duty, 
their loyalty to their Divine Lord. When the brother- 
hood of man is recognized there will be no invidious 
distinctions between men, all of whom are ranked as 
sons of God. 

It may be said without fear of intelligent challenge 
that every thought which carries inspiration to better 
living, every invention which adds to the betterment 
of industrial life, every movement of civilization to a 
higher plane of character — all are the birth and product 
of forces clearly embraced in the Christian program. 
All the great agencies which to-day are really serving 



234 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

the interests of humanity are agencies which Christ is 
subsidizing in the building of his kingdom. The king- 
dom of Christ is alone the kingdom of prophecy. The 
forces which are working against it, however apparently 
strong, are forces against which the very stars in their 
courses are fighting. The testing of every creed and 
of every philosophy only serves the more convincingly 
to emphasize the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ 
alone promises the noblest character to the individual 
and the highest weal to society. 

In any conceivable earthly state there will always be 
exceptions to the ideal. Under best human conditions 
there is likely to be found occasionally the imbecile, 
the shiftless, the pauper, the criminal. But even with 
these Christian government will deal with humanest 
wisdom. There are really no difficult social or civic 
problems now vexing human thought which would not 
find best solution if they were really to come under 
the administration of applied Christian principles. And 
it may be safely said outside of Christianity there is 
absolutely no other philosophy, no other gospel, that 
can give any guarantee of an ideal future for the race. 

And so we rest in the assurance that Christ is the 
ideal King. The principles of his gospel, always adaptive 
to present needs, are also always far in advance of the 
world's growth. Christ will never be outgrown, never 
discrowned. Both the fundamental principles of his 
teaching and his personal character and example furnish 
amplest suggestion of principles which may be applied 
to every emergency of civilization. The very term 
"Fatherhood of God" is a whole moral legislation in 
itself. The same is equally true of that other phrase, 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 235 

"brotherhood of man." Supreme love to God, and 
perfect love to one's neighbor, as conceptions, carry in 
themselves the prophecy of paradise regained. The 
spirit of service as exemplified in the life of Christ, if 
universally enthroned in human practice, would cause 
all the desert places of society to blossom as the rose, 
would leave no material need unsupplied, and would 
fill the world with the fruits of righteousness and peace. 
Christ called himself the "Son of man." In this 
character he put himself before every man of the race 
as embodying in himself the absolutely perfect humanity. 
He was the friend of the rich and privileged in society, 
though his mission did not require that he should show 
unto them any special sympathy with their privileged 
condition. He, though rich, chose for himself a life of 
poverty. He who was really Lord of the world moved 
among men as a servant. He was as much a friend 
of the rich as of the poor, but he was infinitely removed 
from a disposition to pay any servile tribute to the 
conditions of material wealth. For his incarnate mis- 
sion he chose the lot of poverty because thus he could 
best illustrate God's sympathy with the toiling major- 
ities of mankind. He was himself a carpenter. By 
all the material conditions of his life he stood on a plane 
of practical sympathy with the world's humble toilers. 
Christ classed himself with the very poor, but he never 
permitted the temptations and trials of poverty to 
submerge his lofty manhood. Though so poor as to 
be homeless, he was loyal to duty, pure in spirit, self- 
forgetful in his service for others, seeking always the 
welfare of those about him, cheerful and heroic in spirit, 
loving God supremely. Thus Christ demonstrated the 



236 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

possibilities of the highest manhood in conditions of 
poverty, the fact that the noblest character can man- 
ifest itself and do its work even in the midst of most 
unfavorable physical and social environments. And these 
are lessons which need to translate themselves into the 
very heart and convictions of modern society. 

Much of the trouble with organized labor is that 
it is cultivating its discontents as against material 
conditions, seeking enlarging compensation on the basis 
of a minified service, while at the same time many of 
its members seem forgetful of those ideals of virtue, 
of sobriety, of thrift, of loyalty to duty both to God 
and man, in which alone inhere the higher qualities 
of manhood. For all these discontented masses Christ 
has given an infinitely better example for emulation 
than is furnished in any gospel of socialistic propaganda. 

But the practical example of Christ needs to be studied 
by all classes of society. From first to last he gave 
himself in a spirit of untiring service. Wherever and 
in whatever garb human need addressed itself to him, 
there his ministering hand was outstretched. He did 
not seek to be ministered unto, but literally to give 
his life in ministry to others. He taught that it is 
more blessed to give than to receive. And this is a 
supreme lesson to get upon the world's heart. Its 
prophecy may not soon be realized. But when men 
come to feel that humanity is a real brotherhood, that 
the structure of society is a sacred thing, a structure 
so sacred as religiously to demand the highest service 
of all its members, that it is the very structure through 
which God is to build his kingdom on earth, then the 
day of Christ's accepted Kingship will have fully dawned. 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 237 

And there is no room for despair. God, who sent 
forth his Son into this world, is enthroned above the 
misty skies and conflicting currents of human thought. 
In ways of his own infinite wisdom, and by methods 
far more effective than are apprehended by human 
vision, he is shaping and converging events toward 
the day which will witness the supreme Kingship of 
Christ among men. The mists are not so thick, nor 
the conflict of thought so confusing, as to hide from 
prophetic minds the signs of coming triumph. 

If man is a spiritual being, if his primal and deepest 
needs are of a spiritual character; if God is seeking 
above all things else also to establish a spiritual reign 
over the world, then there is the largest prophecy in 
man's prodigious material conquest of nature itself. The 
very conquest of physical realms is but a preparation 
on a vast scale for the successful incoming of Christ's 
kingdom. Just as the presence of Roman civilization 
and of Roman highways prepared the way for the initial 
introduction of the gospel, so the scientific appliances 
which are now reducing the entire world to a single 
neighborhood, and bringing the most distant nations 
into vital commercial and intellectual relationships with 
each other, thus proving the real solidarity and com- 
munity of world interests, are all of them a preparation 
of the highest order for the introduction of the final 
spiritual rule. Man as chiefly a spiritual being cannot 
finally rest in any material conquest of nature, however 
rewarding such conquest. He will ultimately subordinate 
and consecrate all material resources and appliances to 
the ends of a spiritual kingdom. 

All this must mean — and there should be no attempt 



238 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

to make it mean less — that the kingdom of Christ shall 
be finally triumphant because of the in-working upon 
human thought of the Spirit of God. This kingdom is 
not a product of nature, not even of human nature. 
No merely natural progress of man will ever bring it 
to pass. The kingdom will come through the processes 
of a divine and universal religious influence. It will 
mean the reign of Christ in the hearts of men. 

And why should not this be expected? The leaven 
of divine righteousness, a force more powerful than 
that which holds the worlds in their orbits, is working 
everywhere in human thought. There is much in his- 
tory, in present philosophy, in the wide unrest which 
blindly voices the unsatisfied needs of humanity, to 
indicate both the need and the promise of a coming 
era of great spiritual light and power. There have 
been marked manifestations of God's power in the past. 
The illumination of the splendid succession of Hebrew 
prophets, Pentecost, the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, the Wesleyan revival, the steady and rising 
tide of Christian influences throughout the world as 
witnessed in this modern age — all evidence the stately 
goings forth of divine power. God's purpose has not 
changed, nor is his power exhausted. There will yet 
come to the world a religious sense which will invest 
life's common duties with sacredness, which will reveal 
service for the common good as a paramount obligation, 
which will bring the sanctions of eternity to bear upon 
all the domestic, industrial, and political relations of life. 

The apparent obstacles to this consummation, ob- 
stacles which seem to inhere in human nature itself, 
need not be minified. But no obstacles can thwart the 



CHRIST AND THE MODERN AGE 239 

divine purpose. In some day a new world, making 
its advent as the holy city which the Revelator saw 
coming down from God out of heaven, will appear in 
history. And in that day the tabernacle of God shall 
be with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they 
shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them 
and be their God. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 



141 



It is, and always has been, a favorite tenet of mine, that Atheism 
is as absurd, logically speaking, as Polytheism; and that denying 
the possibility of miracles seems to me as unjustifiable as speculative 
Atheism. — Huxley. 

The elimination of the miraculous element from the gospel history 
can never take place without a deep injury or even a total destruc- 
tive alteration of the entire substance of the Christian religion. — 
Christlieb. 

I realize the improbability of an exception to a generalization 
sustained by so immense a mass of accordant experience. But, 
when I think of the alternatives to belief in the resurrection, they 
all seem to me so much more improbable that I find it easier to accept 
the one mystery which explains all mysteries. To believe that the 
faith in the resurrection was a delusion so contradicting all psycho- 
logical laws, or a myth which was fully developed in a single day, or 
a falsehood perpetrated by the disciples to bring upon themselves 
imprisonment and death — to believe that the system of religious 
faith which has created a new and nobler civilization had its origin 
in fraud or deception — taxes credulity more than to believe that 
Jesus rose from the dead. — Professor W. N. Rice. 

O will of God, be thou our will! 

Then, come or joy or pain, 
Made one with thee it cannot be 

That we shall wish in vain; 
And, whether granted or denied, 
Our hearts shall be all satisfied. 

— Susan Coolidge. 

This earth too small 
For Love Divine? Is God not infinite? 
If so, his love is infinite. Too small I 
One famished babe meets pity oft from Man 
More than an army slain! Too small for Love! 
Was earth too small to be of God created? 
Why then too small to be redeemed? 

— Aubrey De Vere. 



242 



CHAPTER XIV 
MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 

It is no overstatement to assert that the intellectual 
temper of the present concerning miracles is largely 
skeptical. This skepticism is greatly overdone. It is 
not sustained by the deepest intelligence. Much of it 
is simply an echo of an effete and discredited philosophy. 
The Deus ex machina philosophy is dead. This philos- 
ophy reduced nature to a machine with which God 
had about as much relation as a man has to a clock 
which he periodically winds. The difference would be 
that God was assumed originally to have started the 
nature machine and then forever let it alone to run 
itself. On this theory a miracle would be a most im- 
probable event. It would be something utterly outside 
the province of the machine. It would indicate nothing 
less than an invasion by an absentee God into the realm 
of natural laws for the purpose either of arresting these 
laws or of imparting to them some new and unusual 
function. A disciple of this philosophy would most 
naturally be skeptical as to the possibility of miracles; 
but, if he accepted the miracle, he would attach to it 
a thaumaturgical importance, as of a most unusual 
advent of God to his world. 

In the accepted theism of to-day God is thought of 
as immanent in the universe. Nature is not an inde- 
pendent order. It is not causal in itself. It is simply 
the vesture or vehicle in which and through which God 
as creative and directive will manifests himself. He is 

243 



244 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

the power behind all phenomena. His intelligence or- 
dains nature's methods, and his will empowers their 
activities. He as the creative and directive will is 
vitally present in all nature's processes. The poise of 
the world in its orbit, the blossoming of the spring 
roses, the ripening of autumn fruit, and the beating 
of the human- heart are alike the products of his activity. 
Nature in this view is itself a perpetual miracle of God's 
on-going. Under this philosophy, any miracle that might 
serve a moral purpose would not a priori seem nec- 
essarily improbable. 

That God's activities in nature are largely characterized 
by uniformity is evident. So far as the human race 
and the interest of its civilizations are concerned, this 
uniformity is a beneficence. Were it not for the known 
reliability of what we familiarly call the laws of nature, 
there would be no basis for human society, for educa- 
tion, for industrial organization, nor, indeed, for human 
progress at all. It is on the basis of this uniformity 
that there are upbuilt reliably all the interests and 
structures of human civilization. 

But because we are able to discover much valuable 
uniformity in God's methods, therefore to assume that 
the ever in-working God might not, or could not, per- 
form a miracle is nothing less than an absurdity of 
intellect. We certainly must concede to God, only on 
an infinitely more various scale, the same liberty to 
combine and to modify the movements of nature that 
we grant to the human inventor. The genius of man, 
while always working within the sphere of law, has 
wrought innumerable wonders by effecting new com- 
binations in nature's processes. It has been one of the 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 245 

baldest assumptions of SCIENCE, the kind of science 
which always parades itself in capital letters, that such 
is the absolute uniformity of nature's laws as to make 
miracle a physical impossibility. To such assumption it 
may be replied that not all the wise men of the world 
know enough about the causal forces in nature to give 
any certitude to such a theory. Indeed, such knowledge 
as we have of whole classes of phenomena does not 
lend itself to this theory at all. 

I return, then, to say that under the philosophy of 
the divine immanence the fact of miracle is not only 
possible, but under certain conditions may be conceded 
as rationally probable. God, for all that we know, 
might work miracles, any number of them, and all 
entirely within the sphere of what we call nature's laws. 
It is entirely beyond the province of human knowledge 
to show that the miracle-working God is a lawbreaker 
in nature. A miracle is conceivably just as normal 
an act of God as is the causing of the grasses to grow 
in the springtime. If, therefore, at any time, for the 
purpose of impressing himself more distinctly upon the 
thought and heart of men, God should elect to work 
miracles, there is in reason no inherent improbability 
against his so working. 

It remains, however, to be said that there is a strong 
conviction in present religious thought that the Christian 
system is not now dependent upon the continuance of 
miracle. Dr. George A. Gordon, one of the foremost 
religious seers of the age, has written a strong book, 
Religion and Miracle, in support of this view. If he 
had undertaken to prove that in Christian history miracles 
had never occurred it would be perfectly certain that 



246 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

he had failed of his case. But in the real purpose of 
his book, which is to show that Christianity is not now 
dependent for its life and usefulness upon miracle, he 
has presented a strong and rational view. 

That Christ, in the particular age in which his advent 
occurred, and for the purpose of emphasizing attention 
to his divine character and mission, should have per- 
formed miracles seems not improbable. That Christ 
actually did perform miracles would appear to be a 
fact as well authenticated as any historic statement 
which has come to us from so ancient a period. Than 
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead no fact of 
nineteen hundred years ago would seem to be more cer- 
tainly attested. Historically, the resurrection of Jesus 
is the foundation on which is reared the stupendous 
structure of the Christian Church. Disprove the resur- 
rection of Christ, and the origin of the Church is the 
most anomalous and most inexplicable event in human 
history. The difficulty of miracle would by no means 
be removed if it could be demonstrated that Christ 
did not rise from the dead. There would then remain 
the two great miracles of the persistent life and success 
of the Christian Church and the place of Jesus in his- 
tory. Neither can be accounted for save on the basis 
of Christ's resurrection. Let the white light of the 
most searching investigation be focused upon the origin 
of Christianity, and the triumphant coming forth of 
Christ from his sepulcher is the only hypothesis that 
will rationally and satisfyingly account for the fact. 
That well-nigh peerless philosophical thinker of our 
times, the late Dr. Borden P. Bowne, has acutely said 
of the miracle of the resurrection that, "Without it 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 247 

not much of the Christian faith would be left, and, 
having it, we can dispense with most of the rest." 

But if one miracle was performed in attestation of 
Christ's mission it is altogether probable that other 
miracles may also have occurred as wrought not only 
by Christ himself, but as well by his authorized agents. 
For my own part, I would like, at the expense, doubt- 
less, of being thought by some quite unscientific, to 
declare that the idea of miracles as wrought by Jesus 
Christ, or by others through power delegated by him, 
is one which does not give me the slightest disturbance. 
I am so impressed with the deific character of Christ, 
I so fully believe in his absolute sovereignty over, in 
his infinite transcendence of, physical nature, as to make 
it entirely easy for me to believe that, for the purpose 
of accentuating a revelation which he might purpose to 
give to finite minds, the performance of miracle by him 
would be most reasonably credible. I am content to 
believe that any miracle by which he might prove or 
illustrate his sovereignty over nature, so far from doing 
violence to nature's methods, would be simply a dis- 
tinctive and inimitable act performed by Him who is 
alone the Lord of nature's processes. 

In a world in which God is immanent there is rational 
room for prayer. Prayer is a subject of universal interest. 
There is no more deeply planted instinct in nature 
than that which prompts man to pray. Man every- 
where and in all ages has been a praying creature. The 
act of prayer is by no means confined to the Hebrew 
or Christian worshiper. As a phenomenon, it is just 
as pronounced in pagan and heathen cults as in the 
religion of the Bible. In some lives the prompting to 



248 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

pray may seem long silent, the instinct suppressed, but 
is never eradicated. In some unexpected moment, in 
some emergency, prayer will leap from the startled 
heart as a frightened bird from its cover. In hours of 
smiting stress men who know not God pray that they 
may find him; and men who have found him delight 
to pray because they know him. 

It is a principle recognized in all the philosophy of 
nature that wherever there is an instinct there is some- 
where in environment a quality which responds to the 
craving of that instinct. Wherever there is an aptitude 
there is in nature a correspondence. This is an expres- 
sion of God's method in his world. To the waterfowl 
there is given an instinct that prompts its migration 
from northern to southern seas, or vice versa, and to 
the same fowl there is also given the instinct which 
unerringly guides its distant flights along its hitherto 
unknown journeyings. This is accepted as philosophical. 
But if God has implanted in the bosom of the water- 
fowl, for the purposes of its own career, an instinct of 
infallible guidance, is it reasonable to assume that in 
the nature of this immeasurably higher being, man, 
God has permitted the instinct of prayer, the impulse 
of worship, the irrepressible craving after himself, and 
only that all this may remain in his bosom an unsatisfied 
hunger, an unexplained enigma, a mocking lie? This 
assumption is not rational, it is not the kind of hypothesis 
on which science builds. If, then, we put prayer simply 
on the plane of what we familiarly call natural phenomena 
it will appear as something entirely rational, be found 
to rest upon a secure philosophical basis. 

Turning to the Bible, it assumes and teaches from 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 249 

beginning to end that prayer is of a divine order. God 
not only enjoins men everywhere to pray, but promises 
ineffable blessings in answer to prayer. In preceding 
pages the Fatherhood of God has been emphasized. 
If God stands in any relation as the Father of the human 
soul, then prayer to God from this child, and the Father's 
answer to this prayer, is not only a logical, but an inev- 
itable and necessary, fact of the relationship. It is 
baldly assumed by many that it is a function beneath 
God's greatness that he should give heed and answer 
to the cry that comes up to him from a human heart. 
But if it be a fact that God is the Creator and Father 
of the human spirit, then there would seem no function 
more worthy of God than that he should give answer 
to the yearning cry of his child. There is no relation 
in which the thought of God is so captivating as that 
in which he reveals himself as a Father. 

It is a condition of Christian prayer that it shall be 
addressed to the Father in the name of his Son. God's 
supreme purpose with this human world centers in the 
work and mission of Jesus Christ. God as immanent 
in the world is subordinating all the long movements 
of history to the final triumph of Christ's kingdom 
among men. The forces that make for the success of 
this kingdom have their full scope for action in what 
is called, by workers in the laboratory, "the order of 
nature," really the ordering of God. In the processes 
of Christ's kingdom prayer as a factor is greatly empha- 
sized in New Testament teaching. Christ not only 
taught his disciples to pray, but himself amid mountain 
solitudes spent whole nights in prayer. 

The purpose of prayer is manifold. It is a means 



250 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

by which the soul comes into personal communion with 
God by wishing itself toward him. The soul in its 
healthier moods hungers for God, and prayer is the 
wings on which it lifts itself to the Divine Presence. 
But as the soul rises Godward on the wings of prayer 
it carries in itself the conditions which permit God's 
incoming into its own life. Prayer is a condition of 
harmonizing the human will with the divine will. The 
very soul of the prayer which Jesus taught his disciples 
is the petition which calls for the doing of God's per- 
fect will on earth, the doing of that will in the very 
heart of the worshiper himself. And when the will of 
God is realized in the heart of the worshiper, then the 
man becomes a new moral and causal force in the king- 
dom itself. His individual life is one added factor among 
the makers of the kingdom. To such a man the promise 
is that he shall ask what he will and it shall be done 
unto him. This is far from the assumption that prayer 
is ordained to secure to men such divine action as will 
serve merely human and selfish purposes. True Christian 
prayer is always, at its very core, subordinate to the 
divine will. But to such prayer the greatest promises 
are given. The soul that lives in the habitual mood 
of such prayer finds itself not only divinely strengthened 
for all work, but wondrously sustained and supported 
in all of life's trials and burdens. And only God can 
say how far the influence of such prayer may go in 
influencing the souls of men and the destinies of the 
kingdom. Christian history is rich in the data of 
answered prayer. God, who works in all realms, is 
securing the right of way for the kingdom of his Son. 
He is under pledge to use his almighty power to answer 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 251 

prayer offered in the name and in the spirit of Jesus 
Christ. Prayer is a divine telepathy by which the 
saintly soul may touch the very ends of the earth. The 
great Laureate was seer-like when he wrote: 

"More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

There is a standpoint, however, from which no in- 
formed person can fail to appreciate difficulties, some 
of them enormous, which confront minds of a purely 
materialistic habit in the way of accepting both miracles 
and prayer. The very assumption of miracle calls for 
Providence — indeed, a miracle itself is a "special" 
providence. The same thought inheres in the very 
concept of prayer. In the vast measurements of the 
material universe which science now commands, in the 
very conceptions which our knowledge of nature now 
forces upon our intelligence, there is much which makes 
the old-fashioned and simple faith in Providence difficult 
of acceptance. Science, by* infallible processes and by 
heaven-searching implements, has, in very recent times, 
brought to our view a vast universe, the near borders 
of which the human imagination, in its wildest flight, 
had never before touched. 

When it was well-nigh universally believed that the 
earth which we inhabit was the principal and central 
orb in the heavens, and that the sun, moon, and stars 
all paid it the homage due a sovereign, and when man 



252 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

— and rightfully so — was looked upon as the one lordly 
citizen of the world, then it was easy to believe that 
the God of the heavens had ordained this earth as the 
chief object of his care, and that to the human race 
was given the first concern of his brooding providence. 
But this conception of the earth has not only been 
entirely displaced, it is proven a conception worthy 
only of most infantile thought. The earth is now known 
to be only one of the minor members of a family of 
planets which move in their various orbits around a 
central sun. What we now know as the solar system 
is vast beyond any previous dream of the human brain. 
Our earth moves in an orbit of approximately about 
93,000,000 miles away from the sun, but Neptune, 
lying on the outermost borders of the system, moves 
in an orbit distant from the sun 2,760,000,000 miles. 
The earth makes the circle of its orbit once in every 
year. Neptune, moving at the rate of 200 miles per 
minute, requires 164 years to make the circuit of the 
solar system. We gain some impression of vastness if 
we reflect that in the sphere of the sun there is room 
to store away a million worlds such as that on which 
we dwell. 

By a daring flight of human ingenuity, the generaliza- 
tion has been reached that all the worlds of this system, 
including the sun itself, are composed of the same sub- 
stances, and are subject to the same laws of formation 
and decay. And this conclusion is no mere speculation. 
It has been demonstrated by infallible processes which 
have yielded the most indubitable proofs. The solar 
spectrum not only shows the common material kin- 
ship of all the worlds in our solar system, but it reports 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 253 

the same substances, the same relationships, for the 
most distant worlds in space. The irresistible conclusion 
is that the material universe, as far as it can be traced, 
is of one character; that its infinite worlds are but con- 
glomerates of the same substances of which our earth 
itself is composed. It would thus appear that there 
is a common kinship of matter in all worlds, and that 
everywhere throughout the universe the same processes 
of evolution and of decay are indefinitely repeating 
themselves. The significant inference from this is that 
all worlds in space are not only held in the grasp of a 
common power, but that back of them all, producing 
the same materials, and working to identical ends, 
there has wrought the same infinite, inscrutable Cause. 

If now for a little we confine our thought to the solar 
system alone, we can but see that physically, as com- 
pared with earlier beliefs, modern knowledge has immeas- 
urably reduced the relative importance of the earth. 
In the ocean spaces of this system the earth is but an 
insignificant island. Measured from this standpoint, it is 
manifestly not so easy as formerly to give credence to 
the assumption that either the earth or man can hold 
the supreme place in any conceivable order of Providence. 

But our solar system, including the sun and its entire 
family of planets, with all its seeming — its real — vast- 
ness, is now known to be but an insignificant unit in 
an infinite series of other stellar systems. The diameter 
of the solar system is 5,520,000,000 miles, a practically 
uncountable number. It would take an express train 
moving incessantly and in a straight line at the rate 
of sixty miles an hour more than 10,500 years to move 
from border to border of this system. This distance, 



254 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

minor as it is in the stellar scale, practically baffles 
human conception. It is estimated that the first of 
the fixed stars, the nearest neighbor sun to our own, 
lies removed at a distance of not less than 25,575,000,- 
000,000 miles. We get some suggestion of the meaning 
of this distance when we remember that light, traveling 
at the amazing rate of more than 600,000,000 miles an 
hour, will require nearly four and a quarter years to cross 
the void that lies between Alpha Centauri and our sun. 
To conceive adequately the meaning of this distance 
is impossible to the human mind. But as yet we are 
upon the near borders of an unknown infinite. Pro- 
fessor Simon Newcomb, one of the most illustrious of 
American astronomers, has estimated that lying in 
unmeasured space, at relative distances from each other 
as great — and often vastly greater — as that of our sun 
from the nearest fixed star, there are at least 125,000,000 
suns, all of them visible to us by telescopic or photo- 
graphic means. If this were all, it would mean accord- 
ing to most reliable estimates a stellar universe of such 
dimensions as to require 3,300 years for the flight of 
light from one of its boundaries to the other. But 
there is no reason to conclude that, instead of 125,000,000, 
there may not be a thousand millions of suns in space. 
In the dream of Richter, when the human spirit, over- 
whelmed in wonder, is speeding past suns and systems 
on the wings of light, to the astonished inquiry of the 
spirit the angel guide is made to say: "To the universe 
there is no beginning, and, lo! there is no end." 

A fact to note is that some of the stars that have 
already come within the astronomer's ken are, in their 
dimensions, of most amazing proportions. It is estimated 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 255 

that at the lowest limit Canopus is more than a million 
times the size of our sun, and the indications are that 
Canopus itself is but a dwarf in comparison with other 
suns that shed their light from the far-off immensities. 
If, as is estimated, Argo is located from us at a distance 
of 30,000 light-years (light moving in a single year 
5,353,561,872,000 miles), then this star may be a million 
times larger than Canopus itself. And all this proves 
that physically, at least, our solar system is but an 
insignificant member of the stellar universe. It is like 
an insect in a countless swarm of systems. 

If now, in addition to all, we reflect that aside from 
our earth there are doubtless millions of inhabited 
worlds in space, we only address to the imagination 
wonder on wonder, problems of the vastest order, prob- 
lems so great as to defy solution by the human intellect. 1 
The view which science furnishes of the steady march of 
world evolution and decay makes absurd the assumption 
that our earth is the only inhabited world. The same 
process which has prepared this earth for human habita- 
tion has wrought and ripened millions of other worlds for 
a like result. In view of what is now known of universal 
world processes, it does not seem to require a great 
stretch of imagination to believe that the universe, aside 
from our world, is at present actually inhabited by in- 
numerable families of intellectual and moral life. The 
human race holds no monopoly in either intellectual or 

1 1 am quite aware of the reasoning of the great naturalist, Alfred Russel 
Wallace, from which he reaches the conclusion that the earth is the only in- 
habited planet in our solar system, and how he undertakes to apply the same 
reasoning to worlds of the stellar systems. I would not for a moment think 
of asserting my opinion in such a matter as against so high an authority. 
Nor do I need to, for, as is well known, many of the first authorities in 
astronomical science do not share this view of Mr. Wallace. 



256 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

moral faculties. At best, it is but a humble colony in 
the infinite domain of inhabited worlds. The opportuni- 
ties for the attainment of all physical sciences, for his- 
torical study, for everything that can add to knowledge, 
are just as perfect in innumerable other worlds as in our 
own. The speculations of philosophy and the deep ques- 
tions of theology may be conceived to be just as rife in 
thousands of other worlds as they have ever been in 
this. 

While it may be assumed that many world-races 
are inferior in their present development to our human 
race, it may with equal probability be assumed that 
many other races are greatly superior. In race evolu- 
tion some worlds may be far behind, while others are 
greatly in advance of, this world. It is not incredible 
that some worlds in the arts and in the sciences, in 
the practical appliances of being, in the perfection of 
their industrial and social organisms, in their intellectual 
and moral advancement, have already reached a develop- 
ment the best forecasts of which have as yet entered 
but dimly into our most prophetic thought. 

If now it should be suggested that all this is but a 
speculation, it may still be replied that what we know 
of the physical universe, of its conditions and laws of 
development, furnishes the most ample basis on which 
to build such a speculation, and to lend to it features 
of greatest probability. 

To return specifically to the thought with which we 
entered this discussion, it is easy to see, with such meas- 
urements and conceptions of the universe before us, 
how to the naturalistic mind the thought of a Providence 
that presides over the destiny of an individual life, 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 257 

or even of the entire human race itself, may seem exceed- 
ingly improbable, if not even absurd. 

As compared with the existence of a universe, the 
physical life of the strongest man is as ephemeral as 
that of an insect; in the illimitable spaces, the individ- 
ual is as insignificant as an atom of moisture in an 
infinite cloud-bank; and among multi-myriad minds the 
influence of the mightiest man is as a breath which 
instantly becomes lost and colorless in measureless 
atmospheres. Indeed, it may most naturally be asked, 
what is man, that the Power which presides over an 
infinite universe should be mindful of him, or the son 
of man, that he should be visited? 

We may, of course, remember that, as great as is 
the universe in its spatial magnitudes, it is not less 
wonderful in its microscopic life. Under our very feet 
are families of life so minute as to be absolutely undis- 
coverable to us except by instrumental aid, and yet 
whose organisms are of the most perfect mechanism. 
All this can only serve to multiply the wonders of exist- 
ence upon our thought. There seems some power 
which as certainly creates and perpetuates this infinite 
underworld of life as that which maintains the stellar 
systems. But this fact does not, perhaps, much relieve 
the natural skepticism concerning the possible relations 
of Providence to human life. Man himself in relation 
to the universe is microscopic. He is, physically meas- 
ured, no more than a mote floating in solar spaces. 
Concerning the relations of Divine Providence to our 
human world, no one certainly can wonder at the in- 
credulity of the scientific mind which puts the emphasis 
of its investigation upon the physical side of the universe. 



2 5 8 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

In fairness, recognition should perhaps be given to 
another class of facts which have always more or less 
challenged intelligent minds as to the fact and moral 
purposes of a Divine Providence in relation to human 
life. These facts are represented by the dwarfed morality, 
the immorality, the selfishness, the cruelty, the con- 
scienceless lust, the barbaric injustice, which have so 
largely prevailed in human history. I quote from a 
recent writer a pregnant paragraph which well illustrates 
how that which has been called history most largely 
represents but a spectacle of "carnage and rapacity": 
"Whole armies of men flung into a field to butcher 
each other for an envied province or an imagined slight j 
arson and thievery, pillage and atrocious crimes ap- 
plauded under the sounding name of conquest; great 
cities sacked, the populations sold in degrading slavery, 
the women to shameful lives; until, a scant century ago, 
the lower classes lost in barbarism and ignorance, a 
prey to the wildest superstitions; the upper class, a 
privileged few, despising work, despoiling the poor, 
licensed to pleasure, and often sunk in the grossest 
bestiality; human beings tossed to lions to glut the 
savage lusts of a Nero; heroes fed to slow fires for the 
preservation of the religion of God; low intrigues and 
court scandal, and women parading their harlotry be- 
cause they are the prostitutes of an individual called 
king." 1 

Add to such a picture the fact of the meager intel- 
lectual and moral development, of the superstitious, 
the unmoral, the unspiritual, and the unaspiring char- 
acter of the great majorities of men now living upon 

» Carl Snyder, The World Machine. 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 259 

the earth, and these facts do not seem to furnish vivid 
proof that this is a world with which an omnipotent 
and holy God is dealing for the purpose of transforming 
it into a spiritual and holy kingdom for his own glory. 
In the light of cold history the vast majorities of the 
myriads of men who have lived upon the earth, intellect- 
ually and morally measured, seem like so much human 
spawn which the stream of time has cast upon the banks 
only that it may perish and be forgotten. 

I do not think I fail to appreciate some, at least, of 
the intellectual difficulties which have made it well-nigh 
impossible for many minds to believe in, to receive 
inspiration, strength, and support from a trust in a 
Divine Providence that presides over the destinies of 
the world and the interests of human life. 

I must now, however, record the conviction that all 
material measurements of man's worth and destiny, 
such as would put a slighting estimate upon his values 
because of his apparent insignificance in the physical 
universe, or which would denude him of divine possi- 
bilities because of his poor present intellectual and 
moral development, are both provincial as processes of 
reasoning and utterly inconclusive. 

The larger universe is not the material, but the spir- 
itual. If a final philosophy shall sustain the fact of a 
material universe at all, this universe will be found to 
be only a vast theater in which God has chosen to enact 
in part — but only in part — the divine drama of eternity. 
The human mind that is able to take so well-nigh infinite 
measurements of the physical universe has capacity, if 
rightly developed and directed, of conceiving a still 
larger and a vastly more inspiring view of the God of 



260 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

the universe himself. God and his moral children are 
the supreme facts of the immensities and the eternities. 
The reason which in its processes fails to give first place 
to these facts may be of a stalwart order, may yield 
results of great value, but it is not sun-crowned, it does 
not keep company with the supreme inspirations. 

It is impossible for us to think of inert and soulless 
matter as belonging to the same class, or as having 
equal values, with thinking mind. The vastness of 
suns and systems may seem overwhelming, but this 
seeming is purely a sensation of thought. The suns 
have no consciousness of themselves, no sense of their 
relationships. They are each in a sense monarchs of 
mighty empire, but they have no knowledge of their 
own rule, no affection for their subjects, no power to 
change their own movements or the methods under 
which they exist. The science of astronomy now places 
at our command a vast knowledge of the heavens, but 
this knowledge is shared not in the slightest by the 
brightest sun that burns. Not by a single conscious 
thought has the entire physical universe ever entered 
into partnership with man's efforts to master its laws 
and to survey its wonders. Its innumerable glories 
would have absolutely no significance did they not 
appeal to a thinking soul. Speaking of astronomy, its 
every spoken truth represents an achievement of the 
human mind. Our present vast knowledge of the stellar 
universe, in its every syllable, is the gift of intrepid 
minds who have commanded for themselves ingenious 
methods of invading the heavens, and who have brought 
back to us the laws and the mysteries of the distant 
worlds. And so it comes to be clearly seen that mind 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 261 

alone is great. This mite of a being which we call man 
annexes the material universe to the dominion of his 
thought. He forces the worlds to surrender to him 
their laws and to uncover their mysteries to his vision, 
and thus he proves his infinite superiority to them all. 

The testimony of astronomy to man's greatness is 
the testimony of all science to the same fact. The his- 
tory of science is but a history of the triumphal march 
of the human mind into every realm of nature in its 
imperious search for truth. That which we call nature 
is like a printed book, its every page filled with high 
values of truth. But nature itself has no more con- 
sciousness of the wealth which it carries than has the 
printed page of the thought-impressions which itself 
bears. It is man's inquisitorial vision alone which 
detects and translates the divine original. I can but 
believe that the significance of this fact is neither to be 
ignored nor neutralized. The very fact that nature 
yields to man his sciences, that she responds to his 
seeking mind in terms of intelligence, is proof of two 
things: first, that nature, throughout her realms, shows 
a plan, that she bears the impress of a formative, a 
creative, intelligence; and, second, that man, by his 
demonstrated ability to translate nature into science, 
shows his intellectual kinship with the great Originator. 

Science has no right to be atheistic. It deals only 
with processes. It knows nothing about origins. The 
great, the sufficient, back-lying Cause of all things utterly 
eludes its analysis. Hume admitted that all we know 
about cause is reiterated sequence, the constant succession 
of events. All the growth of thought since his day — 
and this growth has been very great — has yielded no 



262 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

better answer. But this answer furnishes absolutely no 
explanation of origins, of original cause, Tracing the 
sequence of events, we can diagram the growth and 
decay of worlds. From the data thus furnished it 
seems a sure prediction that our planet, now teeming 
with life, will at some time become lifeless, naked, cold, 
a burnt-out cinder. Such would seem physically to be 
the ultimate fate of all life-supporting orbs of the present. 
This is a conclusion of science concerning physical 
worlds. But it does not follow that this law necessarily 
applies to the moral and spiritual universe. As mind 
and spirit transcend matter, so for the testing of mind 
and spirit the law of physical sequence may furnish 
not even a clue. Science, wonderful and rich as are 
its fruits, has its fixed metes and bounds beyond which 
it cannot go. To state it simply, the time was when 
no life, much less human life, existed upon this globe. 
Of the origin of life science is unable to give any account. 
If the theory should be accepted that the germs of 
the first life of earth drifted here from other worlds, 
this would furnish no explanation of life's origin. It 
would simply push the problem farther back in time. 
How came the germs of life to exist in other worlds? 
And, as science is utterly ignorant of origins, of original 
cause, so it is equally incompetent to pronounce upon 
spiritual destinies. 

I cannot resist the inference that most men exclusively 
employed in physical pursuits fail to give the kind of 
direct emphasis to the moral and spiritual order which 
the very nature of things asserts for this order. Cer- 
tainly there is a large company of discerning minds, 
minds of the first class, who are impressed that thought 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 263 

is something quite distinct from matter, and that moral 
character, both in its values and its destinies, is some- 
thing which infinitely transcends material things. It 
seems equally certain that, to the sanest thought of 
our times, materialism fails utterly to furnish an adequate 
philosophy of the world. A spiritual philosophy, a 
moral order of the universe, which asserts that en- 
throned above all is a sovereign Mind, a Mind that 
controls all things in the ultimate interests of righteous- 
ness — this is the philosophy most securely seated in the 
best thought of the present. And this is a philosophy 
which cannot be displaced by the largest findings of 
science. The best thought of the race has doubtless 
been quite provincial. We have been accustomed to 
think of this human race as a chief object and end of 
concern in the moral universe. But suppose there are 
millions of other worlds in space, as indeed seems prob- 
able, each of which is inhabited by a race of moral 
intelligence. In addition, suppose there are still millions 
of other worlds, as also seems probable, now in prepara- 
tion for future habitation. With such thoughts before 
us, we have at least a suggestion that the physical 
universe, immense, immeasurable as it is, is not built 
on too large a scale to subserve the ends of the moral, 
of that imperishable, universe for which all things else 
were made. 

I am not unmindful that these suggestions would 
seem to call for great remodeling and extension of our 
conceptions of Providence. The Providence of the in- 
finite God and Sovereign of the moral universe, so far 
from being confined in its concern or exercise to this 
human world, is so great and so far-reaching as to have 



264 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

equal application in all moral realms, however far these 
may extend. Our mundane theology, teaching of neces- 
sity its human lessons, of necessity limited to human 
thinking and to human applications, is not large enough 
for the God of the universe, not large enough for appli- 
cation in all moral worlds. Outside of this human 
realm there are innumerable moral families beyond our 
ken, but with which we may have a real kinship. The 
hypothesis of the immensities seems to call for nothing 
less than this. The physical universe is practically 
infinite. If it is presided over by an omnipotent Creator, 
the One whom we worship as an infinite Father, then 
a rational interpretation of the universe itself would 
seem to call for an infinite colonization throughout the 
vast domain of God's moral children. We probably in 
our theology, in our moral philosophy, are most provin- 
cial. In these departments of thought we have quite 
likely made the same mistake as the Ptolemaic astronomy. 
We are geocentric, while really the moral universe, 
as the physical, not only envelops us, but lifts itself 
into innumerable worlds beyond us. This conception 
suggests something, at least, that seems worthy of an 
infinite God and Father regnant in an infinite universe. 

I am quite aware that suggestions like these raise 
questions without number, questions many of which no 
mortal thought at present can answer. I am equally 
impressed that the problems of existence, the philosophy 
of Providence, are too deep and too vast for solution 
by the human mind. But this is only to state in another 
form the emotions of Saint Paul when, overwhelmed 
with the thought of God, he was forced to exclaim, 
"How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways 



MIRACLES AND OTHER WONDERS 265 

past finding out!" I can claim no equality to framing 
a philosophy adequate to the suggestions herewith sub- 
mitted. I can only feel that the territory of material 
atheism can furnish no fitting home for the human 
spirit. Its logic not only makes life meaningless, it 
converts it into an enormous cheat. It smothers in 
an atmosphere of negation and despair all that is best 
in human hopes, all that is loftiest and most prophetic 
in the highest inspirations of the soul. In presence of 
the supreme problems of being the proper attitude of 
the human mind is that of profoundest humility. 

I believe in God, the Father Almighty. I believe in 
the everlasting persistence and supremacy of the moral 
universe. I believe that man is God's immortal child. 
The material heavens and earth may wax old and pass 
away. Suns and systems may cease; but the soul of 
man will continue. Man, the undying offspring of God, 
was made to be a citizen of imperishable realms. The 
Infinite alone marks the limits of human possibility. 
The spiritual man, as God's child, will mature ever into 
the divine likeness and perfections. His growth will 
be everlasting. The resources of all infinities will 
ultimately, at some point, sometime, come into his 
possession. Upon his children the Infinite Father will 
evermore bestow his wealth, and with their endless 
growth they shall evermore receive increasing revelations 
of his exhaustless glories. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



267 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Works read or consulted which have entered suggestively into 
the making of this volume : 

Allen, A. V. G. : Christian Institutions. 

Continuity of Christian Thought. 
Bacon, Benjamin W.: Beginnings of Gospel Story. 
Ballard, Frank: Christian Essentials. 

Theomonism True. 
Begbie, Harold: Twice Born Men. 
Bowne, Borden P. : Studies in Christianity. 

The Divine Immanence. 

The Essence of Religion. 
Brailsford, Edward J. : The Spiritual Sense in Sacred Legend. 
Brierley, J. : Aspects of the Spiritual. 
Cairns, D. S. : Christianity in the Modern World. 
Cambridge Modern History. 
Carlyle, Thomas: Heroes and Hero Worship. 
Clarke, W. N. : The Christian Doctrine of God. 

Sixty Years with the Bible. 
Cornill, Carl: Introduction to the Canonical Books of the Old 

Testament. 
Cunningham, W. : Christianity and Social Questions. 
D' Aubigne : History of the Reformation. 
Denny, James: Jesus and the Gospels. 
Dewey, John: Influence of Darwin on Philosophy. 
Dods, Marcus: The Bible, its Origin and Nature. 
Driver, S. R. : The Book of Genesis. 

Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. 

Modern Research as Illustrating the Bible. 
Encyclopaedia Britannica. 
Fairbairn, A. M. : The Philosophy of the Christian Religion. 

The Place of Christ in Modern Theology. 
Ferris, G. : The Growth of the Faith. 
Fisher, George P. : History of Christian Doctrine. 
Flick, Alexander C. : The Rise of the Mediaeval Church. 
Forsyth, P. T. : The Person and Place of Jesus Christ. 
Garvie, A. E. : Studies in the Inner Life of Jesus. 
Geden, A. S. : Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. 
Gilbert, George H. : Interpretation of the Bible. 
Gordon, George A. : The Christ of To-day. 

Religion and Miracle. 

269 



2 7 o MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 

Gore, Charles, et al. : Lux Mundi. 

Gregory, Caspar Rene: The Canon and Text of the New Testament. 

Hastings: Bible Dictionary. 

Horton, F. : My Belief. 

Hurst, John F. : History of the Christian Church. 

James, William: Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Jefferson, Charles E. : Things Fundamental. 

Jones, E. Griffith: Ascent Through Christ. 

Jordan, W. G. : Biblical Criticism and Modern Thought. 

Kent, Charles F. : Beginnings of Hebrew History. 

The Origin and Permanent Value of the Old Testament. 
King, Henry C. : Theology and the Social Consciousness. 

Reconstruction in Theology. 
Knudson, A. C. : The Old Testament Problem. 
Lea, Henry Charles: History of the Inquisition. 
Lidgett, J. Scott: The Christian Religion, its Meaning and Proof. 
Lindsay, T. M. : History of the Reformation. 
Macalister, Donald : Religion and the Modern Mind. 
Mathews, Shailer: The Gospel and the Modern Man. 
McClintock and Strong: Cyclopaedia. 

McFadyen, John E. : Introduction to the Old Testament. 
McGiffert, Arthur C. : The Apostolic Age. 
Merrick Lectures, 1907, The Social Application of Religion. 
Mitchell, H. G. : The World Before Abraham. 
Nash, Henry S. : The History of the Higher Criticism. 
Orr, James: The Problem of the Old Testament. 

Revelation and Inspiration. 

The Faith of a Modern Christian. 
Peabody, Francis G. : Jesus Christ and the Christian Character. 

Jesus Christ and the Social Question. 

The Religion of the Educated Man. 
Peake, Arthur S. : A Critical Introduction to the New Testament. 
Peyton, W. W. : The Three Greatest Forces. 
Pfleiderer, Otto: The Development of Christianity. 
Price, I. M. : The Ancestry of Our English Bible. 
Pringle, A. : The Faith of a Wayfarer. 
Rauschenbusch, Walter: Christ and the Social Crisis. 
Rice, William N. : Christian Faith in an Age of Science. 
Rogers, Robert W. : Babylonia and Assyria. 

The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. 
Sabatier, Auguste: Religions of Authority and the Religion of the 

Spirit. 
Salmon, George: The Human Element in the Gospels. 
Sanday, William : The Life of Christ in Modern Research. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 

Schaff, Philip: Mediaeval Church. 

Snyder, Carl : The World Machine. 

Stalker, James: The Ethic of Jesus. 

Stevens, George B. : The Theology of the New Testament. 

Wallace, Alfred Russel: Man's Place in the Universe. 

Ward, Harry F. : Social Ministry. 

Warren, William F. : The Earliest Cosmologies. 

Westcott and Hort : Revised Greek English New Testament. 

Zahn, Theodor: Introduction to the New Testament. 

Additional to the above, many books and review articles have 
lent their tone, quality, and impression in a way now impossible to 
trace. 



INDEX 



*73 



INDEX 



Abbott, Ezra, quoted, 135 

Abraham, story of migration, 96 

Albigenses, 9 

America, discovery of, 25 ; a land of 
promise, 26 

Anthropology, history of, 151 

Apocrypha, books of, 68, no; ac- 
cepted by Council of Trent, 131 

Archaeology, study of, 53, 54; light 
on ancient peoples, 91, g2 

Astronomy, new views, 39; testi- 
mony of, 261 

Athanasius, 70; doctrine of Trinity, 
72; theologian, 158 

Augustine, 70; his influence, in 
theology, 72 ; quoted, 72 ; theology 
of, 163 ; early life of, 223 

Babel, story of, 99 

Bacon, philosophy of, 45 

Bacon, Roger, condemned by In- 
quisition, 10 

Babylon, civilization of, 54; tradi- 
tion of, 100 

Bartholomew, Saint, massacre of, 9 

Baur, hypotheses, 141 

Bible, circulation forbidden, 10; 
now better understood, 33 ; in 
time of Reformation, 55 ; neces- 
sity for critical study of, 66; God's 
guardianship of, 67; changes in 
vision of, 77; inspiration, 149, 150 

Biblical criticism, recent develop- 
ment, 55; consensus of scholar- 
ship, 61, 65, 83; the term "higher 
criticism," 62, 85; movement in- 
evitable, 66 ; new view, 75 ; au- 
thor's position, 81 

Bishop, Roman, a lesser pope, n; 
rights of a feudal lord, 12 

2 



Bowne, Professor, quoted, 172, 246 
Brierley, J., quoted, 80, 148 
Briggs, Professor, quoted, 87 
Browning, quoted, 202 
Brunelleschi, 22 

Bruno, murdered by Inquisition, 10 
Bushmen, Australian, 50 
Byron, quoted, 2 

Cairns, quoted, 172, 202, 218 

Calvin, philosophy of, 163 

Canaanites, destruction of, 153 

Canon, the term, 130 

Canossa, Henry IV at, 6 

Carlyle, quoted, 31, 148 

Carthage, Council of, 131 

Charles the Great, 5 

Christ, historic, rediscover}' of, 196 ; 
influence of his character and 
teaching, 197; contemporary of 
all ages, 203 ; reasoning of scribes 
and rulers concerning, 205; his 
real place, 213; divine mission of, 
219 ; the ideal King, 234 

Christian Church, directed by two 
forces, 159; missions of, 195; 
founded by Jesus Christ, 207; 
corrupted by human abuses, 207; 
inspirer and educator, 208 

Christianity, popular successes of, 
156; witnesses to truth of, 221 

Christlieb, quoted, 242 

Church, Roman, center of authority, 
4; absolute despotism, 13; bene- 
ficence, 14; enormously rich, 15; 
arrogance of, 74; claims and as- 
sumptions of, 158 

Civilization, Western and Roman 
contrasted, 198 

Classic learning, 21 
75 



376 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 



Clement of Alexandria, 70; quoted, 
71 ; theologian, 158 

Coliseum, capacity and uses of, 197 

Columbus, 25, 31 

Coolidge, Susan, quoted, 242 

Comparative religions, study of, 48, 
49, 52 

Constantinople, capture by the 
Turks, 21 

Copernicus, theory of, 34 

Creation, in six days, 40; two ac- 
counts in Genesis, 11 1 

Crusades, 7 

Daniel, one of the latest books, 123 

Dark Ages, period known as, 5, 151 

Darwin, his great book, 36; esti- 
mate of himself, 37 \ his philos- 
ophy much misunderstood, 37, 38 

Da Vinci, 22 

Deuteronomy, author of, 118, 119 

De Vere, Aubrey, quoted, 242 

Diaz, 25 

Disciples, convictions and conduct 
of, 204 

Discouragement, no valid ground 
for, 199 

Documentary theory, of Old Testa- 
ment, 83, 112, 113 

Donatello, 22 

Draper, on Bacon, 47 

Driver, Professor, quoted, 54, &6, 
90, 104, 112 

Earth, center of universe, 39 ; man's 

advent upon, 41 
Education, standard of Middle 

Ages, 15 
Egypt, civilization of, 54 
Elizabethan letters, age of, 23 
Elmslie, Professor, quoted, 90 
Elohim, 114 

Elzevir Greek Testament, 137 
Ephraimite prophetic narratives, 

116 



Epistles, authorship of, 142, 144 
Erasmus, first printed Greek Testa- 
ment, 136 
Excommunication, 10, 11 
Exploration, scientific, 31 

Fairbairn, Principal, quoted, 87, 
128, 148, 155 

Fathers, study of necessary, 70 

Fetich-worshipers, 50 

Fiske, John, quoted, 140 

Flood, story of the, 98, 99; tradi- 
tional, 103; Driver's opinion, 104 

Galileo, recantation of, 10 

Gama, Vasco da, 25 

Genesis, general interpretation of, 
40; relation of Moses to, 98; two 
accounts of creation, 11 1 

Geology, its place among sciences, 
36; changes in belief concerning, 
40, 41 

God, Fatherhood of, 163; the se- 
cret of incarnation, 167; basis 
of greatest of the commandments, 
168; modern emphasis of, 169 

Goethe, quoted, 128 

Gordon, Dr. George A., cited, 245 

Gospels, authorship of, 143, 144 

Gibbon, quoted, 2 

Gilbert, Dr., quoted, 84 

Greece, philosophy of, 45 

Gregory VII, consecrated, 5; de- 
poses Henry IV, 6 ; dies in exile, 6 

Gunpowder, introduction of, 24, 25 

Hadley, Samuel H., his experiences, 

225 
Hammurabi, code of, 92 
Hebrews, authorship of, 131, 143 
Hebrew history, engrossing study, 

91 ; myths and legends, 97, 98 
Henry IV, humiliated by Gregory, 6 
Hildebrand, 5 



INDEX 



277 



Hippo, Synod of, 131 

Hort, Professor, cited, 134, 135, 143 

Humanism, 22 

Huss, burned at stake, 10 

Huxley, quoted, 242 

Idolatry, Israel's tendencies to, 93 
Innocent III, master statesman, 7 
Inquisition, infamy of Middle Ages, 

8; its ravages and relentless 

cruelty, 9 
Index Expurgatorius, 10 
Interdict, 10, II 
Interpretation, growth of, 149 
Isaiah, monotheism of, 93 ; product 

of different authors, 123 
Italy, the schoolmaster of Europe, 

22 

Jerome, theologian, 158 

Jews, polytheistic ancestry of, 92 

Jordan, Professor, quoted, 113 

Josephus, quoted, 100 

Judean prophetic narratives, 114 

Kant, his philosophy, 48 
Kent, Professor, quoted, 92, 102 
Kepler, 34, 124 
King, President, quoted, 85 
Kingdom, the, constructive forces 
of 180; Christ's conception of, 
173; hindrances to its incoming, 
180; ideal of, 182; agencies for 
building, 189; mission of, 192 
Knudson, Professor, quoted, 108, 

154 
Koran, tradition of, 139 

Lachmann, Professor, 137 
Laplace, nebular theory, 35 
Lea, H. C, quoted, 2 
Lecky, quoted, 202 
Light, speed in traveling, 254 
Literary History, 138 



Luther, at Diet of Worms, 31, 32; 
quoted, 73; age faced by, 159; 
translator of Scriptures, 161 

Macaulay, estimate of Bacon's phil- 
osophy, 46, 47 

Man, advent on earth, 41 ; univer- 
sally a religious being, 50; un- 
dying offspring of God, 265 ; his 
possible growth eternal, 265 

Manuscripts, variations in, 132-134 

Mariner's compass, 24 

McAuley, Jerry, one of his char- 
acteristic testimonies, 224 

Michael Angelo, 22 

Miracles, intellectual temper con- 
cerning, 243 ; not only possible 
but probable, 245; difficulty of, 
246 ; wrought by authorized agents 
of Christ, 247 ; assumption of calls 
for Providence, 251 

Missionary work, 49, 52 

Modern critical movement, benefi- 
cent mission of, 161 

Modern thought, the term, 3; its 
foundations, 33 

Money, not in itself an evil, 189 

Miiller, Max, 49 

Muratori Fragment, 130 

Murillo, cited, 191 

Nash, Professor, quoted, 30, 44, 60 

Nero, reign of, 197 

Newcomb, Professor, cited, 254 

New Jerusalem, the, 177 

New Testament, books of, 68; criti- 
cism, 129; divisions, 129; ques- 
tions as to authorship and gen- 
uineness, 130; variations in exist- 
ing manuscripts, 132-134; textual 
revision not yet complete, 138; 
facts to remember, 144; literature 
of, 208 

Newton, 34; his theory, 35 



278 MODERN THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH 



Old Testament, books of, 68; divis- 
ions in Canon, 109; varied nar- 
ratives of some events, 11 1 

Orr, Professor, quoted, 128 

Organized labor, a cause of its 
troubles, 236 

Origen, 70; fanciful interpretation 
by, 71 ; theologian, 158 

Otho the Great, 5 

Pantheon, gods in, 156 

Papacy, arrogant claims of, 74 

Papal Church, its ban of fear, 52; 
its variance frGm the New Testa- 
ment, 160 

Papal hierarchy, its composition, 11 

Paper-making, art of, 24 

Paul, Saint, Epistles of, 131 

Pentateuch, canonized, 109; various 
authors, 11 1 

Perron, Anquetil, du, 49 

Personal to the reader, 81 

Philip II, and Index Expurgatorius, 
10 

Philosoohy and critical science, 45 

Philosophy, inductive, 45, 48 ; Greek, 
45> 157; Greek and Roman com- 
pared, 157 

Plato, 33, 5i 

Pope, dominating power, 5, 8; suc- 
cessor of Saint Peter, 6; advisers, 
II 

Power, God's manifestations of 
cited, 238 

Prayer, rational room for, 247 ; man 
a praying creature, 247; teaching 
of Bible concerning, 248; ad- 
dressed to the Father in the name 
of his Son, 249; subordinate to 
the divine will, 250; a divine 
telepathy^ 251 

Priest, parish, intimate relation to 
people, 12; theological training, 15 

Priestly narratives, 120-122 



Printing, 24 

Protestantism, a revolt against ar- 
rogance of Papacy, 74 
Ptolemaic philosophy, 34, 40 
Puritanism, 23 



Raphael, 22 

Rauschenbusch, Professor, quoted, 

44 

Reformers, service in translating 
Scriptures, 74 

Religion, deep in human nature, 50 

Renaissance, meaning of term, 19; 
era of transition, 20 

Reuchlin, 137 

Revelation, God's processes in, 51, 
95-97 ; factors in, 149 

Rice, Professor, quoted, 242 

Richter, quoted, 254 

Reformation, changes wrought by, 
23; emancipator of the human 
conscience, 28; emphasis of, 161 

Roman Empire, fall of, 3 ; a world- 
tragedy, 4; its policies, 156; dis- 
integrated, 158 

Rousseau, quoted, 128 



Salmon, Dr., quoted, 64 

Science, assumptions of, 245; ig- 
norant of origins, 261 

Second coming of Christ, view of 
early Church concerning, 176; 
difficulties of the teaching, 176 

Seneca, quoted, 45 

Service, divinity of, 183; law of, 184 

Sinaiticus, Codex, 137 

Snyder, Carl, quoted, 30, 44, 258 

Socrates, 51 

Solar system, vastness of, 252 ; gen- 
eralizations concerning, 252; its 
diameter, 253; an insignificant 
unit in other stellar systems, 253 



INDEX 



279 



Spectrum, solar, what it shows, 252; 

kinship of matter, 253 
Stewardship, defined, 185 
Strauss, Life of Jesus, 141 
Symonds, J. A., quoted, 18 

"Textus Receptus," 137 

Theism, of to-day, 243 

Tischendorf, 137 

Titian, 22 

Torquemada, 9 

Tregelles, 137 

Trent, Council of, pronouncement, 

130 
Tycho Brahe, 34 



Universe, microscopic life of, 257; 
practically infinite, 264 

Van Dyke, Henry, quoted, 218 
Vaticanus, Codex, 137 



Waldenses, 9 

Wealth, Christ's utterances con- 
cerning, 186; moral uses of, 188 

Westcott, 137 

World, intellectual and moral in- 
fancy of, 192 

Wycliffe, burned at stake, 10; 
quoted, 73; age faced by, 159; 
translator of Scriptures, 161 



tS 17 lyii 



m 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 
17 1911 



